Earthsong
by P.H. Wise
Summary: The galaxy can be a dangerous place for a homeless civilization - especially a galaxy in the wake of the Jaffa Rebellion. Yet even homeless, even lost amongst the stars as they are, the children of Kobol search desperately for a home... called 'Earth.'
1. Chapter 1: Frakked

It's said that a beginning is a very delicate time - a time for ensuring that one has all the correct balances in place. Maybe that's true. Beginnings are funny like that. It was an age of discovery and of conquest. The Tau'ri had ventured out into the galaxy for the first time, and they had brought revolution and war in their wake. The Goa'uld had been challenged for the first time in generations, and their strength had been found wanting. It was a time of great upheaval, and it was a beginning, though of what remains yet to be seen.

In a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  
In a beginning, the Lantians reseeded life in the Milky Way in the wake of a devastating plague.  
In a beginning, twelve planets perished in nuclear fire as their surviving populations fled into the vast gulf of stars, pursued ever onwards by an implacable enemy they themselves had created.

In a beginning, the rag-tag fleet appeared in a series of red and blue flashes against eternity. First one, then another, then another and another, until the whole star-field was full of ships: survivors of the twelve colonies, with the Battlestar Galactica hovering protectively over them like a sheep dog guarding its flock.

In the Combat Information Center of the Galactica, the crew went to work, calculating their new position, watching the dradis to ensure that the rest of the fleet had arrived safely, and otherwise going about the business of their daily routine, and daily routine it had become; it was now ten days and ten jumps since the fleet had left Kobol, the birthplace of mankind, behind them: ten days since they had set their course for the far distant Lagoon nebula, their only clue to the location of Earth.

Saul Tigh was having a day much like any other, remarkable only by virtue of his still being sober when, strictly speaking, he didn't need to be. He'd long ago grown accustomed to the jolts and discomforts of FTL jumps – they'd all gotten over that after the two hundredth jump or so, back in those early hours of their flight from the Colonies. "Report," he snapped.

There was a brief silence as those concerned double checked their information, and then,

"No unfriendly DRADIS contact." The speaker was the young Lieutenant Gaeta, studying the display at his station. A moment later, another crewman - Petty Officer Dualla - announced, "All ships present and accounted for, Sir."

The CAP was already launching, and within seconds the familiar green DRADIS blips of friendly Vipers were circling out towards the edges of the display. More reports were coming in, but those two had been the most important. Colonel Tigh studied the DRADIS for another moment before nodding in a satisfied manner. He picked up the speaker off of the central control console, waited for the Commander to pick up on the other side, and gave his report.

On the flight deck, Galen Tyrol had only just finished overseeing the CAP's launch and was going over the day's business with his crew. Three vipers in need of repairs. One raptor's primary gymbal had broken down. Again.

In the brig, a heavily pregnant Sharon Valerie sat speaking to the father of her unborn child who stood on the other side of the unbreakable glass wall.

And in the pilot's ready room, Lieutenant Kara Thrace fell to the floor and clutched her head in agony as sheer, unmitigated sensory overload tore its way through her brain.

"..Kara...?"

Someone was calling her name, but she couldn't... couldn't... her eyelid was held open with a fingertip. Someone's face. It was too bright. Too sharp. Too focused. Tiny imperfections. Distracting vocal harmonics. A song. A melody. Familiar. Painful. Too sharp. Too much.

"...omebody call Doc Cottle..."

All of this has happened before.  
All of this will happen again.  
In a beginning.

* * *

Earthsong  
A Stargate SG-1 crossover fanfic  
by P.H. Wise

Chapter 1: Frakked

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to Sci-Fi. I think. So does the new Battlestar Galactica. I am neither Sci-Fi nor any of the other people likely to hold ownership of any of the involved properties. No copyright infringement is intended: please don't sue me. I'm not making any money off of this.

* * *

The best laid plans o' mice an' men gang aft agley. That's what we're told, anyways, and for the most part, it holds true. Certainly Daniel Jackson didn't expect to be in the situation he was in when he got up this morning. He'd had the whole day planned out, actually. He'd spend a few hours studying the latest off-world finds, he'd file a few mission reports, and then he'd curl up with a nice, relaxing book. Unfortunately, none of that was going to happen. Not now.

Now, Daniel Jackson was in hell.

Oh, there were experiences he'd thought had qualified as Hell before. Take Ne'tu, for instance. Fire and brimstone, pain and suffering, pain sticks. Then there was the time he'd gotten addicted to the sarcophagus on P3R-636, and had to spend weeks going through medically supervised withdrawal back on Earth. That one was pretty bad. Then there was the time he'd had to watch as Baal tortured Jack to death over and over, resurrecting him every time only to torture him to death again, totally unable to interfere. Well, mostly. But none of that compared to what he was experiencing now.

"Come on, Daniel," Vala insisted, her tone halfway between pleading and sexual-teasing, "It'll be fun! I still haven't seen your marketplaces, and you promised you'd take me to one!" Her hair was done up in pig-tails that looked more like an artist's ironic interpretation of faux-girlishness than anything else, especially when contrasted to her rather skintight leather clothing.

"When did I promise that?" he asked, trying very hard not to grind his teeth.

"Well, you may not have said it in as many words, but it could have been interpreted to mean..."

It was noon, though you'd never be able to tell it from looking. Life is like that when you're living it at the bottom of a converted missile silo. Amidst the drab concrete of the SGC's commissary, Cameron Mitchell sat, polishing off a bowl of red jello. Across from him sat Daniel Jackson, with Teal'c forming the third point of the triangle around the rectangular table. Vala was... in Daniel's lap, actually.

He didn't remember seeing her move. With a nonplussed look, Daniel pushed Vala off into the seat next to his, and glanced Teal'c's way. "So you're sure that the link hasn't worn off? If I shoot her, I still die?"

"Yup," Mitchell replied.

Teal'c looked stoic. "This is a trial you alone must endure."

The day previous, the team had returned from P8X-412, having completely failed to prevent the world from falling to Origin, and having witnessed the Prior's power, it is perhaps understandable that the mood of Stargate Command's flagship team would be a little strained, but Vala for one had never done 'strained' very well, and the team was used to rolling with the punches.

Mitchell shook his head incredulously, trying to suppress a grin.

"Think of it this way, Daniel," Vala said. "You can either take me on a tour of the surface," she tapped a finger to his lips, her finger nail brushing against the groove of his upper lip, "or you can convince your handsome general to let me accompany your team through the gate again. Don't you have a mission you need to go on?"

"There's a third option here," Daniel pointed out.

Vala nodded. "Right. Or, you can endure me constantly asking you to take me to the surface or on a trip through the Stargate until you go mad."

"Right, or that."

Silence for a long moment.

"Well?" Vala asked, growing impatient.

"I'm thinking," Daniel replied.

As if in reply, Walter's voice sounded out over the PA system: "SG-1, please report to the briefing room. SG-1 to the briefing room immediately."

Vala was the first one out the door.

Teal'c, Cameron, and Daniel exchanged looks. After a moment, Mitchell shrugged. "You heard the man," he said.

They left their food where it was and made for the exit.

* * *

A hop, skip, and a jump across the galaxy away, Commander Adama sat at his desk in his private quarters, reading over the morning's reports. Standard, day to day affairs, the odd report on fleet logistics, requests from various ship captains for increased rations of food and water for their crews, and so on. Some requests he signed off on, some he denied. Some reports he read, some he left for later.

Presently, the telephone mounted on the wall buzzed. He took off his glasses and looked at them. They were smudged and badly scratched. The smudges he could clean. The scratches would be harder, but he was unlikely to get another pair. The phone buzzed a second time. He set his glasses down, took the phone, and brought it to his ear. "Go," he said.

Twenty minutes later found Commander Adama striding purposefully through the doors of Galactica's medical bay. It wasn't crowded today, with only two patients visible, and Lee Adama pacing back and forth in front of a white coffin-like cylinder. Doctor Cottle was nowhere to be seen. Lee saluted as his father entered, and the Commander gave a quick, "As you were."

A pause.

"What happened?"

Lee glanced at the sensory deprivation tank, then back at his father. "When I started the morning briefing, Starbuck seemed fine. A little shaken up over something, but that was all. As the briefing went on, I noticed that she didn't look well, so I put Kat on the first CAP in her place. Then, after the briefing, she was still sitting in her chair holding her head in her hands. When I asked what was wrong, she just..." he looked helpless, "... started screaming, and then collapsed. Doc Cottle's been running tests since then. They put her in the tank about ten minutes ago."

A curtain was pulled back, and both Adams looked up at the sound. Sherman Cottle stepped out from behind a privacy curtain, restored it behind him, and approached the two men.

"Doctor," Adama said in greeting.

Cottle nodded. "Commander." He didn't salute. He never saluted. But he did his job, and he did it well.

"You want to explain to me what my best pilot is doing in a sensory deprivation tank?"

"Right now? Floating. If you want more than that, you're just gonna have to wait for the test results like everyone else."

Adama gave Cottle a look, and after a moment the good doctor elaborated.

"Bear in mind, I'm not a neurologist, but I think..."

"Cottle thinks there's something wrong with her brain," Lee said.

Cottle raised an eyebrow. "Who's the doctor here? Me? Then let me do the explaining."

Lee had the decency to look abashed. After a moment, Cottle went on. "This is the brain scan I took of the good Lieutenant at her last physical." He produced an image of Starbuck's brain that neither Adama had any idea how to interpret. "This," he said, producing another image, "Is her brain right now." The image looked different. It was more brightly lit, different sections were highlighted in the image, and there were various numbers and figures that weren't there in the original.

"It's... different," Lee said haltingly.

"Got it in one. And now you both know exactly as much as I do. When the test results come back, I'll be able to tell you more."

Lee looked nonplussed, but the elder Adama simply nodded, long since having gotten used to the cantankerous doctor. "Keep me posted," he said.

"I'll let you know if anything changes. And Commander?"

The Commander glanced over his shoulder at the doctor.

"I could use Doctor Baltar." The words tasted sour when he said them, but that didn't make them less true.

Adama departed without another word.

* * *

_**Twelve thirty. Stargate Command. The briefing room.**_

Colonel Mitchell, Daniel, and Teal'c sit at the table across from General Landry, with Vala standing by the window that overlooked the gate room.

"... Tok'ra intelligence suggests that the people of P3Q-579 may soon be targeted for conversion by the Priors. The Tok'ra report that this planet is part of an advanced star-faring culture, and frankly, we really can't afford to lose a potential ally to the Ori."

"How advanced are we talkin' here?" Mitchell asked.

"A few hundred years ahead of where Earth was before we began the Stargate program," Landry replied. "Colonization of other worlds, practical space travel, that sort of thing. I want you to travel there through the Stargate, make contact with their leadership, and do what you can to prevent the Priors for gaining a foothold there."

"With all due respect, General," Daniel began, "The last time we tried to oppose a prior, it didn't exactly go well..."

"I have the utmost confidence in your ability to think of something, Doctor Jackson," Landry replied.

"You can count on us, General," Mitchell said with more cheer than he felt.

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

"You don't suppose they'll be so grateful to us for saving them from forced conversion to Origin that they'll be willing to, oh, say, shower us with riches?" Vala asked.

All eyes turned to Vala.

"What? I'm just asking."

"You know, General," Mitchell said, "We haven't actually tested the link between pigtails and Jackson here in the last couple of days. We could always leave her here, bring her through afterwards if Jackson faints?"

The General tried very hard not to roll is eyes. "Good luck, people," he said. "I want you offworld in ten."

Eight minutes later, SG-1, such as it was, plus one assorted hanger-on, was geared up and ready to go in the gate room. The Stargate whirled and spun impressively, and steam drifted up around it as the computer dialed the address. "Chevron five encoded," came Walter's voice over the speaker.

"All right, people," Mitchell said. "On your toes. No telling what might be on the other side. Could be anything. Anything at all. Oh yeah. Going into the unknown as the head of SG-1." He looked enormously proud of himself.

"Chevron six encoded."

"You realize that the rest of us have been doing this for eight years, right?" Daniel asked.

"I grew up with the Stargate system," Vala chimed in helpfully.

"I too was not unfamiliar with the experience of gate travel before I ever arrived on Earth," Teal'c said.

Mitchell shot the others an annoyed look. "Come on, people. Don't tell me it's not still exciting?"

"Nope."

"Nuh uh."

Teal'c did not reply aloud, but raised an eyebrow.

"Chevron seven... locked."

The gate whirled open with a whoosh, filling the gateroom with undulating blue light, and as the four of them walked up the ramp and into the gate, Cameron Mitchell called out, "You gotta take some joy in what you do. When we step through this wormhole, we'll be..." He vanished into the event horizon, and a moment later, so did the others.

"...halfway across the galaxy!" Mitchell finished as he and the others emerged from the gate on the far end, stepping out into what appeared to be a museum of some sort. None of the lights were on, but there were lights, so that was a positive step. The stargate prominently displayed amidst a series of artifacts that Mitchell didn't immediately recognize, covered in writing that he definitely did recognize: Ancient. Assorted Greek-style statues placed prominently on either side of the stargate, and the whole section was done up in the style of either a Greek or a Roman temple. "You can never get tired of that. That'd be like getting tired of rock and roll, or chocolate."

Daniel shrugged.

Mitchell made a disgusted motion with his hands. "Aw, forget it. Let's just try to make contact with whoever it is that lives here." He stepped over to where the MALP was waiting next to the DHD at the base of the stylized ramp which led up to the stargate display.

"Wow," Daniel said, looking around.

"You got something, Jackson?"

"It looks like this civilization is definitely heavily influenced by either Greek or Roman styles, and given that we know that the language of the Alterans was sort of a form of proto-Latin, well..."

"Well, what?"

Jackson looked at Mitchell. "Well, it's fascinating."

Mitchell rolled his eyes. "Right. Anything helpful?"

Teal'c had gone ahead to make sure the area was secure. Vala was helping herself to various artifacts. "Vala..." Daniel said warningly, and she irritatedly put back the gold-encrusted cup she'd had in her hands.

"This is interesting," Daniel said, looking at a plaque in front of a statue of a beautiful woman holding a stone bow. "It's written in a variant of Greek. Some of the words and the way they're used is unusual, but if I'm reading this correctly, this is a representation of Athena, one of the 'Lords of Kobol.'"

Vala blanched at the name, but said nothing.

"Goa'uld?" Mitchell asked.

Daniel nodded. "It seems likely. These people were probably brought here from Earth during the time of the ancient Greek civilization." A pause as he considered the implications. "The Greeks actually had some relatively advanced technology at that time, but most of that was lost after the burning of the library of Alexandria, and much of the rest was lost when the Roman empire fell. I've often wondered where we might be back on Earth if the dark ages had never happened. Maybe these twelve planets will show us."

A minute later, Mitchell rounded a corner and frowned deeply. The previous section had been intact, but this part of the museum... had seen better days. Parts of the floor had collapsed, and... he blinked. Was that a corpse down there in the rubble? He sniffed the air, and now that he was paying attention, yeah, he could smell it. Definitely a corpse. He had no idea how long the woman had been at the bottom of the collapsed section, but the bit of rebar through her chest couldn't have been good for her health. Her body was starting to discolour, but she was still striking. Blonde hair, nordic features, tall.

"Not the way I'd wanna go," he murmured.

Daniel shook his head. "Not the most pleasant, no."

The radio squawked, and Teal'c spoke: "Colonel Mitchell, I believe I have found something which you and Daniel Jackson will wish to see." A short exchange of directions followed. After about a minute of walking, they found what appeared to be the main entrance to the museum, in front of which Teal'c stood, glancing up at the archway over their heads before directing his gaze out at the streets beyond. Beyond the ruined doors of the museum was a blasted city, craters all around, carbon scoring, ashes, some buildings partially collapsed. This had been a war zone.

Daniel glanced up at the archway, absently noting the Greek letters which spelled out the words, 'Delphi Museum,' and then caught sight of the city, stopped, and stared.

"... On the plus side," Vala pointed out, "They're not likely to convert to Origin?" It was tasteless, and she knew it, and none of the others responded.

"Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c called out in warning. While the others had been gawking at the sights, he had been checking for possible threats, and he had found one: a blond woman had just rounded a street corner, followed by at least twenty large robots.

Mitchell looked up, "I see them. ... any chance you think these folks are friendly?" Even as he spoke, he and the others moved quickly to take cover from any possible incoming gunfire even as they hefted their own weapons.

"Hello!" Daniel yelled out to the distant woman. "We come in peace!" He paused a moment, and then repeated himself in as close to ancient Greek as he could manage on short notice.

The woman pointed, and the front rank of robots allowed their hands to fold back into their arms, replaced by machine gun barrels. A moment later, bullets began to strike the pillars that SG-1 had taken cover behind.

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" Daniel yelled, still speaking in Greek, "WE ARE PEACEFUL EXPLORERS FROM EARTH!"

If anything, the gunfire grew more intense.

"Nope," Daniel announced. "Not friendly."

"Yeah, thanks, I got that."

"Jackson, Vala, Teal'c and I will cover, you run. Ready?"

Vala and Daniel nodded. A moment later, Mitchell produced a grenade, pulled the pin, and lobbed it over the fallen pillar he was taking cover behind. It landed short of the robots, but its explosion did create enough of a distraction to allow him to open fire.

Vala and Daniel darted into the museum, with Daniel stopping short and taking cover in the entry arch before opening fire as well, joining his weapon's voice to the chorus of gunfire that already echoed across the streets of the blasted city. A robot fell, brought down by the SGC's standard issue armour-piercing rounds. The fall of the first robot brought a momentary break in the fire of the others in the front rank, and Mitchell and Teal'c took the opportunity to run into the Museum.

"The rest of you ready to get the hell out of here?" Mitchell asked.

Teal'c glanced Mitchell's way. "It is an acceptable location to visit, but I would not desire to make it my place of residence." He let off a burst into the body of the first robot to enter the museum, and it staggered but did not fall.

SG-1 continued its fighting retreat through the museum, bullets ricocheting off of floors and walls, priceless artifacts shattering around them, but no bullet finding its mark in their bodies. At last they reached the stargate, and Daniel rushed to its controls, only to curse loudly in dismay. "We have a problem," he announced.

Mitchell glanced at the DHD. "Oh, no, no, no..."

He hadn't noticed it before, but the DHD was missing a few symbols. Specifically, it was missing two of the symbols necessary to dial Earth.

"Dial something else!"

The Centurions would be on top of them at any moment.

"If you have any suggestions..."

Gunfire bounced off the side of the DHD, grazing Vala's leg, and she yelped loudly. By chance, her gaze strayed to some carvings at the base of the state of Athena. A gate address. "Oh, to hell with it!" she muttered, and punched in the address.

Success. The gate opened with a spectacular display of energy as the unstable vortex whirled into existence. "Let's go, let's go!" she yelled, and limped into the event horizon.

"Jackson, go! We'll cover you!" Mitchell yelled over the sound of gunfire, he and Teal'c having taken cover behind the statues of Zeus and Athena respectively.

Jackson ran for the gate and dove through just as a burst of gunfire sheared through an old column covered in Alterran writing: it toppled, crashing down heavily on top of the DHD, burying it in a pile of rubble. The gate disengaged. A moment later, the chamber in Mitchell's P-90 clicked empty.

"Ah, hell," he muttered.

* * *

At first, Doctor Baltar had been annoyed at the summons to the medical bay. He wasn't a medical doctor, even if he did have a great deal of expertise in the medical and biological fields. Theoretical and laboratory work was more to his liking, but his true expertise lay in the area of computer science. Still, after the situation had been explained to him by that intolerable tyrant who ran the medical facility, however, his interest had been piqued - particularly once he got his hands on Kara Thrace's test results.

"Well?" Cottle asked expectantly.

"It's really quite astonishing," he murmured.

* * *

"Doctor?" Adama asked.

"Quite, astonishing," Baltar said. It was now a few hours after he had finished his tests in the medical bay, and he was seated at a table in a cramped room with Tigh, Commander Adama, and Doctor Cottle. "I realize that not all of you possess the medical expertise to understand the data were I to show it to you..."

"Just tell us what you found, Doc," Tigh said, looking annoyed.

"Of course," Gaius replied, very carefully suppressing the resentment he felt towards the balding officer. "At first, I suspected that Lieutenant Thrace may be another sleeper Cylon agent, but the Cylon detection test has disproven that fairly conclusively." He went on a bit, explaining the methodology of the test, and why he'd thought that Kara might have been such an agent.

"Doctor Baltar," Adama said. "Your findings?"

"Yes, yes, of course. Doctor Cottle was correct in his initial assumption that it was a problem of neurological function. From what I've been able to determine, Kara Thrace's brain has begun forming new neural connections at a rate that simply doesn't happen outside of the first years of a child's life. I can't explain it, and I've never seen anything like it."

Commander Adama held Baltar's gaze for a long moment; Baltar looked away. "So what's the plan?" he asked.

Gaius floundered, then, "I, that is, I can only presume that sensory overload is one of the side-effects of whatever it is that is happening, and will probably subsi..."

Cottle cut him off, completely ignoring his ensuing glare. "The bottom line is this: we're out of our depth. We've never seen anything like it."

"What's causing it? Is it contagious?"

All at once, Baltar was sitting on the deck of his lakeside home, shirtless, basking in the sunlight. Six sat on a reversed chair in front of him, smiling coyly. "That is a good question," he told her. "What IS causing it?"

"It's her, Gaius," Six said, leaning over the back of the chair.

"Yes, of course it's her. Who else would it be? ... But what's causing it?"

Six shook her head, disappointed. "Did you really never read the Pythian prophecies?"

"I can't say that I ever really paid much attention to the study of religious texts, no."

"Doctor?"

He was back in the cramped room again. "... I'm not sure. Certainly there's no physiological reason that I can determine. Unless Doctor Cottle has found something?"

Cottle shook his head. "No. I don't like it. Things like this don't happen without some kind of cause, and until we figure out what that is, we can't move forward with any kind of treatment regimen beyond what is already being done."

"Well," Baltar said, "There you have it, then."

None of them liked that. Answers that only raised more questions were rarely welcome. But there was little that could be done about it. Commander Adama dismissed the two doctors, telling Cottle to keep him posted, and then sank back into his chair, brow furrowed in thought.

* * *

_**Stargate Command, Colorado Springs, Earth**_

Several hours later, back at Stargate Command, SG-1 was overdue for their scheduled check-in time, and they hadn't sent their MALP back. Landry was beginning to worry. "Dial it up, Walter," he said. He stood in the stargate's control room, watching as the technicians did their work.

"Aye sir. Dialing now..."

The gate spun up, encoding each of its chevrons in turn, until... "Chevron seven, locked. Receiving MALP telemetry..." Walter punched a few buttons, and an image appeared on the screen in front of him. At first, nothing seemed out of place. Then the camera panned around, revealing significant weapons damage to the area which had not been present before, and no sign of SG-1. Movement at the edge of the camera's field of view. The camera panned up to reveal two large metal robots and, looking directly at the stargate with a stunned expression on her face, was a stunningly beautiful blonde woman. She looked... perfect. Her eyes focused on the MALP, and she approached it. The two robots followed her. She bent down and studied the MALP for a moment, then stepped away, gesturing at the robots.

They opened fire.

The camera cut out an instant later.

"Damn," Landry said. "Sergeant, shut it down. Flag the address as hostile, lock it out of our system."

Walter looked up, surprised. "Yes sir, but... what about SG-1?"

The General met Walter's gaze, sounding more confident than he felt. "I've got some ideas about that."

A conflux of events. Disconnected. Interrelated. The destruction of the Twelve Colonies. The frantic flight of the ragtag fleet. The return to Kobol. The arrow of Apollo. The plight of Pegasus and her crew. SG-1 goes missing on Cylon-occupied Caprica; a ship is sent to locate them. A pilot collapses in the Galactica ready room. A grouchy old man brings in the one man who was really capable, however reluctantly, of understanding that pilot's plight. A prophecy. A dream. A word spoken in hope for the future. A song of a distant blue planet; a mote of dust suspended in in a sunbeam.

In a beginning.

END CHAPTER 1

* * *

Author's notes:

Timeline wise, this story begins after 'The Powers That Be' for Stargate, and just after 'Flight of the Phoenix' in season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. As far as the Pegasus goes, this technically happens after Pegasus finished her repairs after the blind jump, but before their attack on the Cylon staging area.


	2. Chapter 2: Flight of the Intruder

Earthsong  
A Stargate SG-1 crossover fanfic  
by P.H. Wise

Chapter 2: Flight of the Intruder

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to Sci-Fi. I think. So does the new Battlestar Galactica. I am neither Sci-Fi nor any of the other people likely to hold ownership of any of the involved properties. No copyright infringement is intended: please don't sue me. I'm not making any money off of this. This chapter incorporates some material from the Stargate Atlantis episode, 'The Intruder,' which was written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie.

* * *

Space is big. Very big, in fact. The nature of a three dimensional universe means that we can't actually conceive of it having any limit. Some say that it's curved, and that if you fly at FTL speeds in one direction for long enough, you'll eventually get back to where you started. Or you'll outrun the expansion wave of the big bang. Even with Asgard FTL drives, the Daedalus could probably fly in a straight line until the heat death of the universe before it returned to where it started, though. Considered in those terms, the Daedalus was barely more than a stone's throw away from Earth when it received a fateful subspace transmission from Stargate Command. Starting with a view of the infinite vastness of space, the camera zoomed in on the Daedalus, pivoting to follow it as it blazed its way across the Milky Way en route to the Pegasus galaxy, and Atlantis.

Doctor Elizabeth Weir sat alone in the Daedalus' mess hall, watching the light and colour of hyperspace flash by outside the window, a mug of coffee in hand. Her navy blue uniform pants were a little bit rumpled, but her maroon blouse was still relatively unwrinkled, and she looked like one at the end of a long day who, winding down, finds the time for a quiet moment before bed. Every now and again she took a sip of the steaming liquid, and then let the mug settle back down onto the table. It was early. Or late, depending on how you looked at it, but she had always been a little bit of a night owl. ... At least the coffee was decaf.

Presently, the door to the mess opened, and the newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard stepped through the door, dressed casually in the same navy blue pants and a black t-shirt.

"Hey, what are you doing up so late?" Weir asked.

"Couldn't sleep," Sheppard replied, walking to the coffee pot to pour himself a drink. "Must be the, uh, burden of command. You know, ever since I was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel." He sat down across from Elizabeth.

"All right, John. It's been how long now? When are you going to stop trying to bring that up in every single conversation?" Weir's tone was an amused one, and Sheppard smiled.

"You gotta understand," he said. "There's a lot of people in the Air Force who never thought I'd make it past Captain."

She sat back in her chair and raised her eyebrows at him. "Obviously those people whose opinions matter most thought otherwise."

"What about you? What are you still doin' up?"

"I think I got used to falling asleep to the sound of the ocean."

Sheppard nodded. "Well, McKay says we're coming up on the edge of the Milky Way. We'll be in Pegasus before you know it. It's funny - I spent the past year wondering if I'd ever see Earth again, and as soon as I got there..."

"I know how you feel," Weir said. "It was extremely convenient to be able to step through the Gate and be at Stargate Command in an instant, and now this..."

However she might have finished that sentence was lost, as at that moment, an airman came walking into the room. "Doctor Weir," he said, "Colonel Sheppard, there's been a complication. Colonel Caldwell wants to see you both immediately."

Sheppard and Weir exchanged glances, and then each put down their mugs, got up, and followed the Airman out the door. Five minutes later found them standing on the bridge as Colonel Caldwell explained the situation.

"SG-1 failed to check in on schedule on the planet designated P3Q-579. The MALP indicated hostiles in the area, so we've been ordered to try to make contact with the team," Colonel Caldwell explained.

That sank in for a moment, and then, "Aren't there any other ships that can do this?" Sheppard groused. "We are kinda busy."

Colonel Caldwell gave Sheppard a patient look. "The Prometheus is currently three days away at its top speed, Colonel Sheppard. It's far easier for us to stop by and check in. With any luck, nothing is wrong. If something IS wrong, well, we'll be arriving in orbit over P3Q-579 in seven minutes. When we arrive, we will retrieve SG-1, and then we will continue on to Atlantis. They can gate back from there."

Sheppard was less than pleased, but he kept his mouth shut.

"Thank you for telling us, Colonel," Weir said. "I trust you'll keep us informed if there are any new developments."

Caldwell nodded. In the background, the ship's intercom buzzed. The communications officer looked up. "Sir," she called out. "There's been an accident on deck three."

Caldwell looked irritated, and then glanced towards Weir and Sheppard. He couldn't leave the bridge when they were this close to coming out of hyperspace in a totally unknown situation. "Go," he said.

Sheppard nodded, glanced at Weir, and together they left the bridge, heading for deck three.

* * *

_**Seven Minutes Later, in orbit of P3Q-579**_

Some days existed solely to try the patience of one Colonel Steven Caldwell. This was shaping up to be one of those days.

In the skies over Caprica, the remnants of a massive fleet floated, dead but weightless, a silent testimony to the culture that had once flourished here Here and there upon the wrecks, lettering could still be made out. Atlantia, one proclaimed. Pacifica, another read. Triton. Acropolis. Solaria. Rycon. The list went on: vast ships, each one nearly a mile long, and all of them dead, silent, empty. There were similar wrecks above several of the neighboring worlds, but this was where it had begun, and this was where the destruction was the worst.

In the midst of the ghostly fleet, a hyperspace window opened, slicing what was left of Battlestar Rycon neatly in half. An instant later, the BC-304 Daedalus emerged from hyperspace in a flash of light.

"Collision warning!" a young lieutenant shouted from her station immediately to Colonel Caldwell's right.

"Shields!" the Colonel said.

The shields went up in just the nick of time. Daedalus collided head on with the bisected Rycon. The hull of the ship, many times the size of the relatively diminutive Daedalus, had already been significantly weakened by the weapons fire that had rendered it dead in space, but even so, it was still a massive vessel, and the armor was still thick: Daedalus's shields flared violently, there was a flash, and bits of metal sprayed out in every direction, some pelting the hull of the Daedalus as it ground to a halt, some raining down into the Caprican atmosphere.

"Damage report," Caldwell snapped, forcing himself to release the edges of his armrests.

"Shields are down, sir. We estimate five to ten minutes before we'll have them back online. Minor hull damage across the forward sections, no breaches."

Steven Caldwell let out a quiet sigh of relief. He'd expected it to be much worse. "What the hell hit us?"

The sensors operator spoke up. "Sir, we've come out of hyperspace in the middle of a fleet."

Silence hung over the bridge for a moment as that bit of information sank in. "Any survivors on the ship we collided with?" Caldwell asked at last.

The sensors operator shook his head. "Negative, sir. In fact, there don't appear to be any life-signs coming from any of the ships in the alien fleet."

The Colonel blinked. "Derelicts?"

"Looks like, sir. I can bring up a visual."

"Do it."

The sensors operator punched in a few buttons, and the monitor screen lit up with the image of what was left of a large ship. Written on the side was the word, 'Atlantia.'

Colonel Caldwell scratched his chin and looked thoughtful. "Major Cooper, take us into orbit," he said.

Emma Cooper nodded, not glancing away from the tactical display which showed Daedalus's position in space relative to the other objects in the system. "Aye sir."

Even as the Daedalus made its way out of the debris field and into a high orbit over the planet, the comm chirped briefly. "Sir," the communications officer said, "I have Doctor Weir on the line. She says it's urgent."

"Put her through."

There was a momentary hiss of static, and then.. "Colonel Caldwell?"

"What do you have?"

"We have a problem. Doctor Monroe is dead."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Doctor."

Weir's voice came through the comm once more a moment later: "It looks like he was killed by a power surge while he was initializing a program that deals with enabling certain computer security protocols - they're designed to isolate and shut down corrupted programs. Doctor McKay is checking the logs now, but he recommends we avoid going back into hyperspace before we've had a chance to run a full diagnostic of the power distribution systems."

That didn't sound promising. "I'll take that under advisement. Caldwell out." He glanced towards the communications officer. "Any sign of SG-1?"

"I'm hailing them now, sir."

...

"SG-1, Daedalus. SG-1, please respond, over."

...

"SG-1, Daedalus. SG-1, please respond, over."

The communications officer - Lieutenant Tam - shook her head. "I'm not getting a response, sir."

"Do we have a lock on their locater beacons?"

"Yes, sir. But I'm only registering two of the four locater beacons..."

To his credit, no sign of the irritation he was feeling showed on his face. "Lock on to their signals and beam them directly to sickbay," Caldwell ordered. "Hermiod?"

The Asgard's voice came back in reply over the comm: "I have a lock. Initializing transport."

* * *

On the surface of Caprica, Teal'c and Colonel Mitchell were having what could be called a slightly less than good day. They'd been shot at, been separated from the rest of their team, Teal'c had taken a hit, Mitchell had bumped his head, they'd been captured, manhandled by killer robots, and now a gorgeous blonde in amazingly impractical clothing was interrogating them. There was a name for days like this.

At the SGC, they called them 'Tuesdays.'

Of course, the fact that they had no idea what the woman was saying probably had something to do with it. She was certainly angry about something. That much Mitchell could tell, what with the beating she'd given them both. He was likely to have a hell of a shiner when he got out of this. What he couldn't tell was whatever the hell she was speaking. He hated it when the aliens didn't speak American. Teal'c had tried replying in Jaffa, but that didn't do much. Then Mitchell had gone for Pig Latin, but that hadn't gone over well, either, so on an off chance, he'd tried what little he knew of actual Latin.

The Latin had gotten a pause out of the woman, and she'd immediately switched over to a language that sounded kind of similar, but went way over his head after the first two words.

"Woah, woah, woah," Mitchell said. "Woah. Slow down." He gestured to himself. "Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell." He pointed to Teal'c. "Teal'c."

"Mit-chell," she echoed. Then glanced at the Jaffa. "Teal'c." She formed the words awkwardly, the combination of sounds not coming particularly naturally to her.

She looked from one to the other and back, then indicated herself. "Andromeda," she said. Two of the robots were there in the room with guns pointed at the two men, but Andromeda's anger seemed to have faded now, replaced by open curiosity. She spoke something softly into a communicator. Half a minute later, the door opened, and a dark skinned man in a lab coat entered the room, carrying a tray with two empty hypodermic needles set up for drawing blood.

"That doesn't look good," he murmured. His weapons were gone, as was most of his gear, but strangely enough, they hadn't taken away their locator wrist-bands. Maybe they just didn't recognize them as being things worth taking.

"Indeed it does not, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c responded.

The man exchanged words with Andromeda, and then the two turned to their prisoners. "Mit-chell," Andromeda said, and pointed to him. Then she pointed to the dark skinned man. Mitchell wasn't sure, but it sounded sort of like, "Arithmos Tessares." Bound as he was, there wasn't a whole lot Mitchell could do to stop the man, so when 'Arithmos Tessares,' or whatever his name was, moved forward with the hypodermic needle in hand, all he could really do was brace himself. A brief prick in the arm later, the dark skinned man had moved on to Teal'c.

"I guess this is a bad time to mention that I really hate needles," Mitchell muttered.

Once the dark skinned man was done, Andromeda gestured, and both he and the two robots left the room. She spoke something that was probably meant to be soothing. It was hard to tell on account of being distracted by the 'sexy as hell' bit that the other parts of her tone sometimes slipped by. Sexy as hell, angry and sexy as hell, soothing and sexy as hell. Yeah, there it was. After a moment, she left the room, shutting the door securely behind her. So it was that none of the Cylons were present to witness the disappearance of their two prisoners into the matter stream of an Asgard transporter. By the time they'd turned around after the strange noise and the light, no sign remained of Mitchell or Teal'c.

When he and Teal'c materialized in the medical bay of the Daedalus, Mitchell seemed to brighten. "Oh good." He then promptly collapsed.

* * *

**_Briefing Room, Daedalus_**

"What happened down there, Colonel?" The voice asking the question was Weir's. The briefing room in the Daedalus wasn't quite as spacious as the one on Atlantis, but it did its job. She, Doctor McKay, and Colonel Sheppard sat on one side of the table, with Colonel Mitchell and Teal'c on the opposite side.

Mitchell let out a long, slow breath. "Right. So it all started when I went to breakfast this morning..."

* * *

It was about seven thirty in the morning, though you'd never be able to tell it from looking. Life is like that when you're living it at the bottom of a converted missile silo. Amidst the drab concrete of the SGC's commissary, Cameron Mitchell sat, polishing off a bowl of red jello. Across from him sat Daniel Jackson, with Teal'c forming the third point of the triangle around the rectangular table. Daniel had finished his meal, Teal'c was savoring his, and Mitchell just seemed to like red jello. They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, and then...

"So," Mitchell said.

"So," Daniel echoed.

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

A pause.

"... Signs and wonders," Mitchell muttered, and shook his head.

"Hmm?"

Mitchell looked to Daniel. "Just something my grandma says. 'If you need signs and wonders to prove your faith, it ain't faith.' Thing is, I'm not sure what good faith will do against... signs and wonders."

Teal'c took a bite of his meal - sirloin steak, and said nothing.

"We've run into apparently god-like beings before," Daniel pointed out.

Mitchell nodded. "I know, I know. I just..." he shrugged. "I mean, does it always have to be a godlike enemy with powers that defy description? Just this once, can't it be an ordinary enemy with easily describable powers, preferably which involve being vulnerable to bullets?"

* * *

"Colonel Mitchell," Doctor Weir said, interrupting Mitchell's tale, her tone a patient one. "When I said to start at the beginning, I didn't mean 'tell me everything that happened to you today.'"

Mitchell didn't quite grin. "Just trying to give some valuable context, Ma'am. Where was I? Oh, right. General Landry called us in for a briefing..."

* * *

"... Tok'ra intelligence reports that the people of P3Q-579 may soon be targeted for conversion by the Priors. The Tok'ra report that this planet is part of an advanced star-faring culture, and frankly, we really can't afford to lose a potential ally to the Ori."

"How advanced are we talkin' here?" Mitchell asked.

"A few hundred years ahead of where Earth was before we began the Stargate program," Landry replied. "Colonization of other worlds, practical space travel, that sort of thing. I want you to travel there through the Stargate, make contact with their leadership, and do what you can to prevent the Priors for gaining a foothold there."

"With all due respect, General," Daniel began, "The last time we tried to oppose a prior, it didn't exactly go well..."

"I have the utmost confidence in your ability to think of something, Doctor Jackson," Landry replied.

"You can count on us, General," Mitchell said with more cheer than he felt.

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

* * *

"Is that all he ever says?" Sheppard asked, interrupting Mitchell's story.

"What?"

"'Indeed.'"

"Er..."

Teal'c spoke up, then. "Indeed it is not, Colonel Sheppard. My English vocabulary is in fact quite extensive."

"Right. Just checking," Sheppard said.

"Look," McKay said suddenly, "Not that I don't enjoy a good story, but can we just skip to the end? Is there a short version?"

Mitchell looked annoyed. "Short version, fine. Teal'c, Daniel, Vala, and I all went through the gate..."

"Vala?" Sheppard asked.

"Thought you wanted the short version?"

McKay looked irritated.

"So yeah, we went through the gate and found the ruins of what was probably a really impressive civilization, once, before it'd been nuked straight to hell. Jackson got all excited looking through the museum we came out in, said the whole place was Greek, everything was written in Greek. They had the Stargate on display like it was just some old artifact they dug up, and everything was going fine until we got out to the street.."

"What happened then?"

"Well, that's when the army of robots showed up and started shootin' everything that moved."

"... army of robots?" McKay asked incredulously.

"They were formidable enemies," Teal'c intoned.

"Short version," Mitchell replied. "So anyways, we're under fire, and I tell Jackson to fire up the gate and get us out of here. Only thing is, the DHD was busted. Not completely broken, but some of the symbols we needed to dial Earth were missing. Vala dials up an address, he and Vala went through, and T and I were going to follow when an explosion dropped a big stone column onto the DHD the whole thing shut down. We ran like hell, but they caught us anyways. Apparently armies of robots don't have to stop to catch their breath. Anyways, the big bad blonde chick was just getting to the part where she threatens to torture us for information. Of course, that didn't quite work out seeing as how we don't speak the same language. Turns out her name was Andromeda."

"Huh," Sheppard said. "Andromeda."

"Oh, she was a real sweet-heart. Then her buddy, what's his name... Arithmos Tessares? Something like that."

"Number four?" Weir asked.

"It's all Greek to me, ma'am," Mitchell replied.

Weir's lips twitched in amusement, but she managed not to laugh.

"Anyways, you know the rest. Long story short, we have no idea where Jackson and Vala gated to. For all we know they could be back at the SGC by now."

"Or they could be trapped on an alien world," Sheppard pointed out.

"Right."

The lights flickered and died, and remained off for a couple of seconds before coming back online.

Mitchell raised an eyebrow. "What's up with the lights?"

"We're looking into that," Sheppard replied. "Or at least, someone SHOULD be looking into that right now." He directed a pointed glance McKay's way.

"What? Doctor Weir asked for us to come to the... what, you don't think she didn't mean me when she asked you to come to the briefing room?"

Silence.

"... Well, fine. I'll just go see what Hermiod's come up with."

Once Rodney had left the room, Mitchell raised an eyebrow and glanced at Sheppard. "Is he always like that?"

Sheppard nodded, his expression long-suffering.

"Huh."

Teal'c looked stoic and said nothing.

* * *

"What's our status?" Caldwell asked as he walked onto the bridge. He was getting another one of those headaches - it was just turning out to be that sort of day.

"Engineering reports another accident, sir," Lieutenant Tam reported. "Doctor Lindstrom is dead. He was blasted out an airlock, sir."

"I think we can rule out random accident this time," Caldwell said. "Have we done a scan with the life signs detector? Checked to see if there's an intruder aboard?"

"Yes, sir. All personnel present and accounted for, no extras."

Caldwell thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "I want all civilian personnel confined to their quarters until this crisis is resolved, McKay and Weir excepted. In the meantime, how are our EVA teams doing?"

"Better news there, sir. Our teams have located what appears to be an intact hanger deck on board the starship designated 'Atlantia.' They've already tagged, and we've beamed over, several alien fighters with the locater beacons."

Caldwell nodded. That should keep a ship full of scientists occupied for a while, once this crisis was dealt with. "Keep me posted."

"Yes, sir."

The lights flickered, died, came back on line. A moment later, the sensors operator frowned. "... Sir, I've just registered two spacial distortions approximately fifty thousand kilometers from our position."

Caldwell looked up. "What kind of spacial distortions?"

The sensors operator punched a few commands on his console, and transfered his display to the main bridge view screen. Two unknown contacts were highlighted in red, each of them about fifty kilometers apart.

Fifty thousand kilometers from the Daedalus, two Cylon Basestars had just jumped into position, each one dwarfing the Daedalus by an order of magnitude. Each ship was basically two extremely acute triangles stacked one on top of the other, each triangle positioned at an angle such that the six points of the two triangles were clearly visible with no overlap. A massive central pylon connected the two triangle-sections.

"Take us out of orbit, but keep your distance – we don't know if they're hostile, and if they are? We're in no condition to fight."

The lights flickered once more.

* * *

"Rodney, what am I looking at?" Sheppard asked. He was in engineering with McKay, Novak, and Hermiod, staring at a wall full of binary code.

"It's a virus," Rodney said, staring at the display in surprise.

"How perceptive of you," Hermiod said.

"Where did you find it?"

"One of the navigational computers," Hermiod replied. "There is evidence of it in communications and some of the propulsion systems as well.

"So it's spreading," McKay surmised

"Yes. And changing."

"What do you mean?" McKay asked.

"It appears to be rewriting itself as it grows. It is unlike any human-engineered program I have ever encountered."

McKay frowned briefly, then stepped over to a nearby console and typed in some commands.

"What are you doing?" Sheppard asked.

"I'm just checking something. I'm sure it is impossible." He activated a few controls, and abruptly the binary on the display converted to wraith writing. "Crap!"

Hermiod blinked, then glanced at McKay. "What did you do?"

McKay was looking pale at this point. "I just ran it through a translation program... it's Wraith."

"Crap indeed," Hermiod said.

"Rodney, why didn't we have a defense against this?"

McKay looked irritated, and it came out in his tone. "Because it's completely impossible. The technological base for Wraith systems hardware is so radically different from ours that even establishing a basic 'handshake' shouldn't be achievable, much less outright software interaction!"

The lights went out, and every console in engineering powered down. There was a brief sound of rummaging, and then Sheppard switched on an electric torch, its light bright and harsh in the darkness. "Well, I hate to say it," he said, "But I think our little virus friend has moved past the 'handshake,' and gone straight to third base. If we don't want it doing something to our computer systems that we'll both regret, we'd better do something about it."

Rodney glared.

Meanwhile, on the bridge, the sensors operator's jaw dropped open. Most of the ship's systems were now down, but the sensors were still functioning, and from what he could see...

"Sir, we've got contacts. Oh boy but do we have contacts..."

"Talk to me, Lieutenant," Caldwell said.

Outside the ship, several hundred fighters launched from each of the Cylon Basestars, with the entire swarm bearing down on one thing and one thing alone:

Daedalus.

* * *

_**Liberation fleet Basestar 0024**_

"Assume the relaxation length of photons in the sample atmosphere is constant. Unknown contact inconsistent with known Colonial profiles. Anomalous energy readings detected. Track mode monitor malfunction traced. Two hundred and twenty five meters by ninety five meters by seventy five meters. Two launch bays. They shall be gathered up like leaves and cast into the fire. End of line. Reset."

Number One regarded the Hybrid with a raised eyebrow before turning his attention back to the data that the link was feeding him. The ship didn't look all that different from existing Colonial vessels to him: it was a new design, certainly, but if the humans really thought that one prototype vessel - particularly such a tiny one - would make a difference at this point, they had another think coming. "Launch Raiders. Prepare a missile salvo."

Outside the ship, Raiders began to detach from the hull, joining in the group from the second basestar to form a massive swarm of two hundred and twelve fighter craft. Meanwhile, missile turrets swiveled into position and then fired, sending fifty low-yield nuclear devices in advance of the Raider swarm. Neither ship had devoted its full compliment: over three hundred Raiders had been held in reserve. Once both nukes and raiders were away, the basestars followed up with additional salvos of conventional missiles, each firing a volley of seventy. After that, the only thing left to do was wait. The alien ship had come to a full stop some forty five thousand kilometers out, and it would take time for missile and raider alike to reach the target.

* * *

_**Deep space carrier 'Daedalus,' bridge**_

"Main power is down, sir. We've got minimal sensors, comms, and rail guns."

"We have massive incoming. I'm counting... two, maybe three hundred contacts, a mixture of fighters and missiles." A pause. "They're firing nukes, sir!"

Caldwell was not idle. He glanced towards his the station of Major Kleinman, weapons officer. "Weps, engage all rain guns in point defense fire." A look to Major Cooper. "Try to maneuver us back towards the derelict fleet. Let's see if we can't get a few hulls between us and the incoming fire." He flipped a switch on his chair. "Doctor McKay, Hermiod, Doctor Novak, we need shields in three minutes or we're dead."

"You're kidding, right?" came McKay's disbelieving reply.

"SHIELDS, Doctor!"

A hail of fire erupted from the barrels of some twenty four railguns across the hull of the Daedalus - the ship had thirty two of them, but there was no way to position the ship such that all of them had a firing solution on the incoming attack. Even this far out it was clear there was little that could be done: there were just too many targets, and it took too long to confirm a kill after the shots were fired. All told, a dozen raiders suffered a depleted uranium round through their hulls, and three missiles suffered the same.

"Two minutes, Doctor," Caldwell said.

"I know, I know, I know, shut up, I'm thinking..."

Shut up, I'm thinking? "Doctor?" Caldwell asked, a note of irritation entering his voice.

"Perhaps I might be of assistance." A new voice had joined the conversation, this one speaking in deep, confident tones. Teal'c.

"No offense, but what could you possibly do to help?" That was Rodney.

"Colonel Caldwell, if I am not mistaken, this ship possesses a full complement of naquadah-enhanced nuclear missiles, does it not? Does it not also possesses Asgard transporter technology?"

"If you're asking if we can beam nukes into the alien ships, Hermiod already said no. Apparently the lives of everyone on the ship including him aren't worth his breaking the rules again."

"I am not, Rodney McKay," Teal'c replied. "I am suggesting that we use the nuclear devices as..."

"Space mines!" McKay all but shouted over the link. "Colonel, if we can beam some naquadah-enhanced nukes into the path of the enemy force with proximity sensors, we can destroy the entire incoming force!"

"Indeed."

"Just give me ... forty seconds to make the necessary calculations..."

The seconds ticked by in silence, the first of the nuclear missiles getting uncomfortably close to Daedalus' unshielded hull. Thirty thousand kilometers. Twenty thousand. Fifteen thousand. Ten thousand. Five thousand.

"Doctor!" Caldwell said, his tone an insistent one.

"Got it! Transporting now!"

A blue dot appeared on the sensor screen, and then another, then another, another, and another. And then the first twelve hundred megaton nuclear device detonated. Then the second. Third. Forth. Fifth. There was no need for a sixth. There was no blast wave in space ordinarily, but these were extraordinary circumstances: the raider and missile fragments themselves became a blast wave of sorts as, for a moment, five stars blossomed into being in the space between the Cylon ships and the Daedalus. Thermal radiation superheated their hulls, instantly vaporizing the Raiders' organic systems even as x-rays and other forms of radiation cooked whatever was left, reducing a force of two hundred raiders and a hundred and ninety missiles to an expanding cloud of glowing fragments in a matter of seconds.

For approximately thirty seconds afterward, all was still in the skies over Caprica.

"... Incoming fighters. Looks like they've learned their lesson, sir. They're staggering their groups. A squadron of a dozen fighters plus a missile salvo, the next group moving in about a minute behind the first."

"Sir, it's going to take at least half an hour to reach the derelict fleet from our position using maneuvering thrusters alone," Major Cooper reported.

"Understood, Major. Do your best. Rail gun batteries, I want those missiles out of my sky. Doctor McKay, what's your status?"

A brief pause, a crackle, and then the Doctor's voice came through the radio. "Colonel Caldwell, our systems have been infected by a Wraith computer virus. The good news is that the fact that our ship is cobbled together from a dozen different technological bases is actually working to our favor for once: only those systems based on Ancient design seem to be affected so far."

"What's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is that the virus is adaptive, and that it's only a matter of time before it learns how to address the rest of the ship's systems. So far we're looking at a loss of every Goa'uld system on the ship, since the Goa'uld designs are basically extremely ineffecient reverse-engineered Ancient designs. Apparently that similarity combined with the adaptive nature of the virus was enough for it to infiltrate those systems. Now that includes sublight engines, the ring platform, and our primary power generators. Secondaries are online, but until we get the primaries back online, we won't be able to power the shields or the hyperdrive."

"What about the 302s? Aren't those based on Goa'uld technology?"

"Yes. Thankfully, their computer systems are entirely Earth-based, so they shouldn't have any problems. ... Until the virus adapts itself to infiltrate the rest of our systems."

"Is there any way to get rid of this virus?" Caldwell asked.

"Yes, but it's going to take a complete shut down of all affected systems, and a reboot from the backups."

"Make whatever preparations you need, Doctor, but don't initiate the shutdown until my mark."

"Got it. McKay out."

"I'm detecting another spacial distortion, sir. One ship, a little smaller than a Tel'tak."

Caldwell returned his attention to the tactical display currently projected onto the ship's forward viewport. "Understood. Launch the 302s. Without our shields, we can't afford for those fighters to be operating in our airspace unchallenged."

Eight out of the complement of sixteen F-302s sped out of the launch bay and into the vacuum of space, racing out to meet the incoming Cylon squadron, and for the first time, the 302s met their match: based on Goa'uld technology as it was, the 302 was far more resilient than the Cylon Raider, but the Cylon craft was the more maneuverable. But there was another, far more critical difference: the 302 pilots were primarily trained for atmospheric combat; they were new to space. The Cylons had been here for the better part of fifty years. Thus it was that the 302 pilots of the Daedalus learned the truth of the old adage: adapt or die. Still, adapt they did. Watching their friends die around them proved to be a great motivator for learning, and despite losing three of their number in the first minute of the dogfight, the 302s began to make a showing for themselves, taking down Raider after Raider and soon setting up the picket around Daedalus that they had been ordered to establish, picking off any missile or Raider that the point defense guns missed.

It was a game of attrition, now. The missiles and railguns on the Daedalus with its Asgard sensor systems against the sheer volume of fire coming out of the two alien ships. They had been able to fend off the missile barrage so far, greatly assisted by occasional naquadah-enhanced nuclear explosions at the midpoint between the alien ships and the Daedalus, but time was ultimately on the side of the aliens.

The tel'tak sized ship vanished, another spacial distortion rippling around where it had been right around the time the first missile slipped through Daedalus's defenses and impacted against the hull.

* * *

_**Battlestar Pegasus, 10 minutes later**_

Admiral Helena Cain tapped the command console thoughtfully as she considered the news their recon flight had brought back. An unknown military vessel was holding off a pair of basestars in orbit over Caprica. More to the point, a military ship **barely the size of an Eversun passenger cruiser **was holding off a pair of basestars in orbit over Caprica. Not that she particularly wanted to be in this area of space, but they'd been tracking a large Cylon fleet build up. The Cylons were gathering a task force. Reinforcements for... something. They weren't sure what, but that huge new Cylon ship was with the force, and Helena Cain meant to follow it, to hound it, and to destroy it.

"It's a trap."

Helena met her XO's gaze. "Possibly," she replied. The images the reconnaissance team had recovered showed the ship clearly enough - definitely not a Cylon design, not any Colonial design she was familiar with, but also not 'other.' Not alien. It **looked** like a human ship, and that made her curious. She weighed the potential risk in her mind, and then, she made her decision.

"Spool up the FTL," she ordered.

"Sir, I strongly urge you to reconsider," Colonel Belzen said. "Is recovering technology from what is clearly an experimental warship really worth the risk of jumping into the hornet's nest?"

Helena felt a brief flash of rage. She didn't like to have her orders questioned. She smothered that rage, looking her XO in the eye. "I've made my decision," she said.

A moment passed.

He saluted. "Yes sir." The frenzy of activity began, calculations made, hatches secured. Belzen scooped up the telephone handset from the command console. "Action stations. Set condition one throughout the ship."

Good. "I want blue and red squadrons in the tubes and ready to launch the moment we come out of FTL."

In the ship's hanger bays, pilots suited up and boarded their vipers.

The ship jumped, and for an instant, the world went away.

* * *

_**Daedalus**_

"Spacial distortion detected. ... Sir, I'm picking up a ship out there. It's massive!"

"Give me something more helpful than 'massive,'" Caldwell snapped. Another ten minutes and they'd be at the debris field. He doubted the ammunition stores for the railguns would last that long, and both ship and the 302s that formed her defensive screen had long since used their entire payload of missiles. Only six 302s remained - he'd had to commit the eight he'd held in reserve after the first ten minutes of combat; a few had ejected, and their locator beacons still pinged on the sensor display, waiting for the ship to regain power and transport them aboard. The sensors operator tapped a few keys, routing his station's display to the central view screen: an image of a ship at least 1700 meters long - larger than even the two vessels Daedalus had been attempting to evade for the last twenty minutes. Had the other ships called in reinforcements?

His question was answered a moment later when yet another vessel appeared near the two hostiles, its profile identical to theirs. Then it clicked - the unknown contact was clearly the same design as many of the derelicts. The star-ships weren't just annoyingly hostile to outsiders: he had brought the Daedalus into a war zone.

"Unknown vessel is launching fighters, firing upon the enemy ships."

"McKay, we need those shields RIGHT NOW."

Doctor McKay's voice returned over the comm: "There's a way to get them, but you're not going to like it."

* * *

_**Pegasus**_

"Unknown vessel's primary drive appears to be offline," a technician announced. Vipers were swarming out from the Pegasus now, three full squadrons moving to support the remnants of Daedalus' beleaguered 302 squadrons. That set off the Cylons in full - no longer holding anything back, they launched every raider they had left, sending out a swarm towards Pegasus several times larger than what Daedalus had faced twenty minutes previous.

"Engines all ahead full," Helena ordered. "Bring us alongside the unknown vessel." The faint thrum of Pegasus' engines grew in intensity as the ship accelerated.

"Engines report ahead full," the XO said.

"We have a firing solution."

Helena nodded. "Fire."

The guns of the Battlestar Pegasus lit up, then, even as it came alongside the much smaller earth ship, a continuous stream of fire lighting up the dark of space, filling the night with light. The effect on the incoming swarm of Raiders was devastating; a full sixty raiders were blown out of the sky in the first few seconds, sixty more in the next, and then the raiders were out of Pegasus' firing solution, and the ship's fire continued on unimpeded, some shots intercepting incoming missiles, others finally striking home against the unshielded hulls of the distant base stars; the first base star took the brunt of it, its' hull lighting up in a halo of fire as secondary explosions rippled across it, causing horrific damage.

"Sir, the unknown vessel is hailing us."

"On speakers."

A man's voice spoke, then, and for all anyone in Pegasus' CIC could tell, he was speaking gibberish: the only words any of them recognized were 'Earth' and 'Daedalus.'

Earth? **EARTH? **Helena Cain exchanged a stunned look with her XO.

* * *

_**Daedalus**_

Colonel Caldwell was definitely having one of those days. Funny how those days only tended to happen when either Colonel Sheppard's team or SG-1 was involved. At least SG-1 wasn't trying to take over his ship. He'd heard nightmare stories from Colonel Pendergrast in that regard - Colonel Mitchell had taken up station at a secondary console, and Teal'c was somewhere below decks. "Go ahead, Doctor McKay."

"We can purge the virus, but in order to do so, we'll have to do a complete systems shut down and reload everything from backups."

Caldwell was silent for a moment. "You realize we're in the middle of a firefight, don't you?"

"I told you you weren't going to like it!"

"Sir, unknown vessel is drawing alongside. Their fighter squadrons are moving to support our 302s."

Caldwell smiled. Some good news, at least. "Open hailing frequencies. Let's see if we can't find out who to thank for our rescue." A pause, and then, with hailing frequencies open, Caldwell spoke, "This is Colonel Caldwell of the Earth vessel Daedalus. I'd like to express our gratitude for the rescue..."

The other ship responded, then, cutting him off, and a woman's voice came through the comm, the voice of one sure and confident in her authority. She wasn't speaking English. Most likely she was speaking the form of Greek Doctor Jackson had discovered on the surface of the planet.

Caldwell furrowed his brow. "We need someone who speaks Greek."

"Where's Jackson when you need him?" Mitchell commented. Caldwell ignored him.

"I took Greek in college, sir," Lieutenant Tam announced.

"Good enough. Translate the following message: we are purging a computer virus from our ship's systems and request permission to dock. Can your FTL take another ship along for the ride?"

* * *

_**Pegasus**_

The stunned silence which had settled over the CIC was broken, then, by a new voice on the comm: a woman, speaking in very stilted Kobolian: "Ship have sickness, but we fix. Request... docking. You ship jump us?"

A beat as Helena Caine and Jurgen Belzen took in what had been said. Then Helena looked to her communications officer, replacing the phone handset in its place on the console. "Relay instructions to the... Daedalus for coming into dock."

The instructions relayed, Daedalus maneuvered itself under Pegasus, settling down upside down relative to the larger vessel, each ship using an extension of their artificial gravity fields to ensure a lock.

"Recall all vipers. Prepare the ship to jump."

Pegasus' viper squadrons performed their combat landings even as the surviving 302s came to rest in Daedalus' hanger deck. A missile got through the point defense screen, and a shudder went through Pegasus. Then another. And then...

Pegasus vanished in a flash of blue light, taking the Daedalus with it. A swarm of raiders and missiles filled the space the two ships had only just evacuated.

END CHAPTER 2


	3. Chapter 3: Kobol

_"All of this has happened before. All of it will happen again." _

The words echoed in her dream, and she tossed and turned in her bunk. She was running; her heart was racing. She was surrounded by thick, temperate rainforest – redwoods everywhere, and ferns, and sorrel, and the smell of life mixed with recent rain thick in the air. Kobol. She was on Kobol. The ground was wet, and her feet squelched in the mud and splashed in the puddles as she went.

Something was chasing her. Something terrible. Its rancid breath curled like smoke around her heels as she ran. She spared a glance back over her shoulder, and what she saw nearly froze the blood in her veins. She ran faster. A scream was building in her throat as she saw that the Thing behind her was still gaining. It didn't make sense. The last thing she knew, there were... she'd been in the pilot's briefing room, and everything **sharpened. **Details she never noticed before were overwhelming. And, and, and there were these **voices. **Whispers. So many. And screams, and too much light, and _too much confusion_, and it had hurt worse than anything had hurt her before, and then... she was here.

It seized her by the throat and threw her hard against the trunk of a nearby redwood. Even as she scrambled around to put up some kind of defense and met the pitiless gaze of the Thing, she knew despair. For the most part it was a Cylon Centurion, but it was a patchwork thing, as if someone had tried to rebuild a damaged Centurion with decomposing human remains: its translucent, needle-like teeth were clearly visible through putrescent holes in its rotting lips. There was another name. On the tip of her tongue. She couldn't recall...

_ "They know who you are, Kara. You're special. Leoben told you that. You have a destiny." _

She looked up. "Sharon?" she asked the empty air.

The Centurion-Beast's very human, very rotting lips curled into a rictus smile.

_ "Your people are asleep. They've been asleep for a long time, but it's time to wake up, now. You are the first..."_

Cornered. Trapped. No way out. The Centurion-Beast reached out for her, the feeding orifice on its hand twitching in anticipation.

"NO!" the word rose up within her, and even as she screamed, the world dissolved.

Images swam at her in a blur. A dark-skinned man with a golden tattoo on his forehead led a charge of a dozen soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms against an advance of Centurions. A city sank beneath the ocean waves. A handsome man in an unfamiliar uniform with graying hair shook hands with Commander Adama. A pale man with a glowing staff opened the doorway to Hades, and death rode out across the stars. She saw her own Viper being pursued by a dozen Cylon raiders. The raiders opened fire. A pillar of light shot up around her ship, and it exploded, bursting apart in a hail of broken metal mixed with fire.

_There must be..._

It was all around her, now. So many voices, all across... voices, voices, voices whispering, whispering, so much whispering. 'God I could use another cigarette.' 'Sure. Ignore me. Like you always do.' 'I'm hungry.' And she was. She was hungry thirsty cold tired sick dying healthy in love pregnant angry not-her-parents'-possession flying a viper flying a raptor in CIC wonder how Starbuck's doing heard she was in sickbay sometimes I just want to slap that man silly another drink another drink another go another love so much love and shining in a stream of stars and all that black so vast, so vast. For a moment, the woman known as Kara Thrace almost lost herself in the stream.

She saw it.

Leoben had tried to tell her. Rivers and streams. She was in the current. It was sweeping her downstream. She was Kara Thrace. She was Doc Cottle. She was the nurse is the next room. The patient dying of cancer. She was the maintenance technician working in the hallway outside. She was the mother who couldn't find enough food for her children to eat on the Rising Star. She was Lee, and Kat, and Helo, and Sharon, and she was Gaius Baltar, and who was that blonde he was with? not-her, and then she was the Commander, and Tigh, and Dee, all their thoughts rippling around in her head in the stream, and there was a melody, and it **hurt.**

_ There must be some kind of way out of here..._

Kobol. She was on Kobol.

The glade which held the Astria Porta was full of people - refugees - filing out into the untouched wilderness in groups of three and four. Behind them the event horizon rippled, and every moment more and more people trickled through it, some with little more than what they carried on their backs, some with what little they had managed to pack before the evacuation.

All went dark. Darkness and water, all around her. Pitch black. Focus. Focus. Focus. Focus. She clenched her eyes shut, trying to will it all away.

The voices vanished. Snuffed out as if they had never been.

Inside the sensory deprivation tank, Kara Thrace opened her eyes.

* * *

Earthsong  
A Stargate SG-1 crossover fanfic  
by P.H. Wise

Chapter 3: Kobol

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to Sci-Fi. I think. So does the new Battlestar Galactica. I am neither Sci-Fi nor any of the other people likely to hold ownership of any of the involved properties. No copyright infringement is intended: please don't sue me. I'm not making any money off of this.

* * *

They say it all began with a Word. God spoke, and it was. The Word of creation was spoken, and by the power of language, an idea became reality. Bang. An explosion of matter out of nothing rippled through the fabric of eternity, and time coalesced around it even as it began to expand. This is worth considering because we are also beginning with a word. The word is '...Daniel!' and it was spoken by Vala Mal Doran as she and Daniel Jackson came sprinting out of the Stargate's event horizon and into a small, quiet glade. Of course, what she had meant to say was, "Move, Daniel!" but the whole 'Move' part had been lost as she'd entered the Stargate back on Caprica. A hail of bullets followed them through, striking up dirt and grass on the ground all around them.

It was only when the gate deactivated noisily behind them that Daniel realized that neither Cameron nor Teal'c would be joining them on ... wherever it was they'd wound up. 'Right,' Daniel thought. 'Time to dial earth and...' his train of thought came to a sudden, crashing halt as he glanced about.

"Daniel," Vala began, "Am I being struck by a sudden, intense hallucination, or is there not a DHD attached to this gate?"

"You're not hallucinating," Daniel replied.

No DHD.

"Damn," Vala muttered.

Right. So given that Teal'c and Cameron hadn't dialed in, chances are, they weren't going to. Which meant that he and Vala would have to find some sort of power source and manually dial the gate.

... This might take a while.

* * *

Kara kept her eyes shut. She didn't have to, but it was easier that way. Less stimulus for her to fix upon. It was better now. Not so overwhelming. Not that she'd trust herself in a viper cockpit just yet, but it was better. She heard Lee's approach long before he actually arrived. His footsteps on the deck outside the medbay's door. The scrape of metal on metal as he opened the door, the rustling of his clothing as he stepped inside. She was hearing a lot of things, it seemed - the flare of Cottle's match, the sound of air flowing through his cigarette, his footsteps on the sickbay floor, his comments to other patients, privacy screen or no privacy screen.

It was all so damn noisy.

"Hey." The voice was Lee's, and though he spoke quietly, it seemed deafeningly loud to her, and she did all that she could not to wince.

"Hey," she said weakly, not liking the feel of her own voice buzzing through her head.

"I'd heard you were awake. Good to see you conscious. And out of the tank." The warmth, the sincerity in his voice was almost painfully clear to her. She could hear the undertones, the overtones, every way his voice resonated. He must have noticed her wincing, because he grew visibly concerned. "You OK there, Starbuck?" He didn't speak that last aloud - she didn't notice.

She was rubbing at her temples. "I'm fine. Just, everything's... intense. I don't know how to describe it." So she showed him. She wasn't sure **how**, exactly, but she _showed him_, and his eyes widened, and he staggered, gripped the edges of her bed for support, and then collapsed to the deck, eyes staring blankly, blood leaking from his nose. She stared in open-mouthed horror.

"Lee?"

Nothing.

"LEE!"

The sound of the privacy curtain being pulled aside was almost deafening, but Kara ignored it, as well as the good Doctor who had pulled it aside. For his part, Sherman Cottle took a moment to stare down at the fallen Lee Adama before he muttered, "Oh, hell."

* * *

They were walking. Daniel and Vala had been walking for the better part of an hour now, following a faint path through the otherwise primeval forests of Kobol, and as they walked, Vala grumbled. Half an hour ago, they had reached the top of a hill, and they saw that the terrain opened up after the next rise into a wide valley filled with grass, a stream, and the ruins of a city. His curiousity piqued, Daniel had decided to keep going, hoping to find something there that might help them to power the gate. They were at the edge of the valley, now, and Vala was being... Vala.

"I am not being difficult, Daniel, I simply do not see why I should trek across this wretched wilderness to look at some crumbling stone buildings when we should be looking for a power source. If these were crumbling stone buildings left by the Ancients, that would be one thing, but these? These can't be worth the effort."

He tried very hard to ignore her.

"Stop ignoring me! I will not be treated as though I am not present!"

Very, very hard.

The going was more difficult than it should have been - though the terrain was easy, the lack of a path of any kind made it troublesome. Still, together, Daniel and Vala made reasonably good time. Presently, they spotted something that looked a good deal more recent than any of the ruined buildings: the carbon-scored hull of a crashed aircraft.

Daniel gave Vala a look.

"I'm willing to concede that I... may have been overly hasty in my dismissal of the stone ruins as a potential location to find..."

Daniel gave Vala a look.

She rolled her eyes. "You were right. I was wrong. Happy now?"

Daniel smiled the faintest ghost of a smile. "Yup."

They made good time after that, moving across the overgrown ruins towards the downed ship. Not for the first time, Daniel was very glad that he'd taken an extra dose of his antihistamines with him on this mission - his pant legs were accumulating quite the collection of grass-burrs, any one of which might have made him itch for hours, otherwise. And then, about a hundred feet from the crashed ship, Daniel stopped short, staring at the stone columns on either side of the ruined entryway to the building at the center of the crumbling city.

"What?" Vala asked, looking at him in askance. "What it is?"

"I know this place..." And he did. He wasn't sure how, but something about this seemed very familiar.

Vala frowned. "How could you possibly know this place?" Her tone grew suspicious. "Unless your team has made a habit of getting stranded on planets with defective Stargates? Is there some sort of 'frequent strandee' program of which I am unaware?"

So... familiar. Something about the ruined building called to him. Vala was speaking, but he couldn't make out what she was saying. She seemed so far away. So very far away. Something was here. Something was about to...

Daniel Jackson stepped through the doorway and into the Opera House.

* * *

Cancer.

Laura Roslin hated that word. She hated it more than she could ever possibly express.

Weeks, Cottle had said. A month at the outside. That had been seven days ago. She'd known she was dying for a long time, of course. She'd learned about her cancer the day the worlds had ended. So long ago, it seemed. ... One hundred and sixty eight days since the end of the worlds. One hundred and sixty eight wasn't the number that mattered. That was something different: 47,853. The number of humans left alive in the fleet. In the whole galaxy, for all she knew.

There were 47,853 humans alive in the galaxy, and Laura Roslin was dying of cancer.

Once she had railed against this fact. Once, she had cried out against the injustice of it all: _'If I am going to to die - if I am going to die - if I am going to die, why, why in the name of the gods was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate stars and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of human fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to kill me, why did sh enot do it at the end of the colonies and save me all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd. No, she cannot mean to kill me...' _

But that was all behind her now. She was going to die. Nothing would change that. And there was something freeing about that realization. Something liberating about the knowledge of your own mortality. She never would have imagined it if she hadn't experienced it.

Laura Roslin was going to die. So what would she do before the end? What was truly important? What would matter?

Her thoughts strayed back to the Arrow of Apollo. To the Tomb of Athena. To the road to Earth. And thinking of these things, President Laura Roslin steeled herself, prepared for her raptor to land on Galactica, and murmured a prayer to the Lords of Kobol in one of the many ancient tongues of the colonies: "_Vizvedevaa_ _Kobol. Asato ma sad gamaya. Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya. Mrtyor ma amrtam gamaya."_

Nothing to do but wait. Wait for the raptor to land. She was here to see Doctor Cottle again. And to see Bill Adama.

Bill Adama...

The raptor settled onto the trap with a thunk. A moment later, it began the slow descent to the hanger below. Eventually, the raptor reached its destination, and it was rolled off of the trap and onto the hanger proper - dozens of technicians and deck hands went about their business. Even as the door opened with a hiss, and the smells of Galactica's hanger deck assaulted her senses, she could hear Chief Tyrol barking orders, hear the good natured grumbling of his crew, hear the faint hiss of Galactica's CO2 scrubbers.

Bill Adama was waiting for her.

Smoothing out the collar of her suit, Laura Roslin rose to her feet and stepped out of the raptor and onto the flight deck.

"Madam President," Adama said.

She smiled.

He didn't ask how she was. There wasn't much point. She knew. He knew. Together the long walk from the hanger, footsteps on the deck, his warmth beside her, her hand in his as they made their way to sickbay. All thoughts of death were far away. He was real. She was real. They were alive. She could almost close her eyes and drift away.

She didn't.

When he didn't turn away at the entrance to sickbay, she looked at him in askance. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate his presence, just that it wasn't usual for him to go in with her.

"Lee's been injured," he replied.

Captain Apollo. A hundred different potential fates flashed through her thoughts. "Oh my gods. What happened?"

"That's what we're trying to find out. He was out for hours, but Cottle says he should be awake any moment now."

Roslin nodded. Adama opened the hatch, and together, they stepped into sickbay. Over the ship's comm, the voice of Felix Gaeta spoke: "All personnel, prepare for jump. The clock is running. Repeat, the clock is running."

Cottle was there to meet her. And then Bill was being shown off to another area of the sickbay by a nurse, and Laura to still another. Even as she sat on the hospital bed, even as Doctor Cottle pulled shut the privacy curtain, Felix Gaeta continued over the comm: "In five, four, three, two, one..."

**Jump**.

* * *

It was so bright he could barely see, and his eyes were long in adjusting to the light. Daniel Jackson stood just inside the doorway of... he wasn't sure what. Vala was nowhere to be seen. The floors were carpeted all in red, the ceilings were all gold and white, and the light was so very bright, and it only grew brighter further inside the building. Slowly, he made his way across the soft red carpet, through the lobby, and into the theater itself. He could see, now, and he knew this place. Such light, such splendor. **He knew this place. **

A woman stood upon the stage robed in white with long, dark red hair. She had a kind face, bright green eyes, and she looked tired. Dreadfully tired. He recognized her, even so, making his way down towards the stage of the opera house, empty but for the two of them. "Hello, Daniel," she said.

"Oma?"

"Yes."

Daniel stared for a long moment. Was this a trick? How could Oma be here? "I thought you were..." he began.

"Locked in eternal battle with Anubis?" she asked.

He nodded. "Something like that, yeah."

She smiled. "I am. But that is not why I am here."

He looked at her suspiciously. "How do I know it's really you?"

"How deep is the river if you cannot see the bottom?"

"You've said that before," he said.

"Yes."

A pause, and Daniel looked about, taking in the grandeur of the opera house, with all its reds and golds and whites, and so many seats, and on the stage, ten white drapes that seemed to glow with a light all their own. "What is this place?" he asked.

Oma Desala looked seriously at Daniel Jackson. "This is the Opera House," she replied, "in the City of the Gods... on Kobol."

"But I know this place..."

Oma nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose you would."

A beat passed, and Daniel felt that old frustration again - he wanted to know more, and he knew she wasn't going to tell him what he wanted to know. He took a breath to center himself, allowing the frustration to drain out of him. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but you usually don't stop by just to chat," he said. "Has something happened?"

Oma nodded. "I'm going to tell you a story, Daniel. A very old story." A beat. "_Omnia illa et ante fiebant, omnia illa et rursus fient. Ita dicimus omnnes._"

Daniel frowned at that. "All of this has happened before...?" he echoed.

"Once there was a Maiden," Oma began, "... who was the living embodiment of everything right in the world. While she lived, no real harm could come to anyone. Oh, wounds, disease, even death, sure. But she stood between the world and anything worse."

He could hear music. It was faint. Almost beyond the range of his hearing. But it was there.

"'Except,' she said, 'I am going to die.' And no one listened. 'I am going to die tomorrow,' she said. And no one heard. Into the silence, she said, 'There's always an ending, after all.'"

The implications of what Oma was saying sank in quickly: 'All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. So say we all.' The cycle of time. Eternal return. The cycle of the ages. A dying maiden who stood between the world and anything worse. "Are you saying that there IS a cycle of time? And that something is going to endanger it?" She couldn't possibly mean that.

Oma sighed faintly, but did nothing to either confirm or deny Daniel's supposition. "Once there were..." she went on, "shadows in the window... footsteps at the gates of life... whispering at the door: 'Should I live or die? Am I living or dead?'" A beat passed. "'To know the world is to choose it,' said the Void." Oma met his gaze. "Do you understand?"

He didn't. Not really. It showed in his eyes. He didn't believe that she could possibly be saying what he thought she was.

"Something dark is coming, Daniel - perhaps the darkest time your people will ever know. I cannot help you against it, but I can warn you. I can show you the shape of things to come. Will you look?"

Silence. A decision to be made. The fate of many resting upon the outcome, for good or for ill. Would he look? ... How could he not?

Daniel looked. It hurt, but he looked. And in that moment, he knew what he had to do.

* * *

_**Battlestar Galactica, Unknown System**_

Lee Adama was less than happy when he woke. It probably had something to do with the splitting headache he was suffering from. Or perhaps it was waking to the sight of Sherman Cottle leaning over him to check his vitals - nobody wants to wake up to the sight of Doctor Cottle's face completely filling their field of vision, so his surprised yelp was perhaps understandable, even if it did nothing for his headache.

For his part, Cottle just rolled his eyes and straightened himself up. "You're awake. Good."

Lee rubbed his eyes and tried to sit up, only to be overcome by a wave of nausea: he sank back into the bed. "How long have I been out?" he managed after a moment.

"A few hours. You've got a pair of visitors if you're up for it."

Lee tried to sit up once more, and this time he was able to manage it, blinking owlishly. "... Fine. Send them in."

A few moments later, Cottle was gone, and his father and Kara Thrace stood at Lee's bedsite, Kara looking apologetic, his father looking worried.

"Are you all right?" his father asked.

Lee nodded. "I think I'll be fine. Cottle seems to think so, anyways."

"What happened?"

Lee shook his head. "I... I'm not sure." He looked to Starbuck. "I was talking to Kara, and then..." He shook his head a second time. "There's too much confusion."

"I think it was my fault, Sir," Kara said, her expression a little sheepish. "I... I'm not sure how to explain it. I could show you, but I think that would just make you end up like Lee."

Adama considered Kara for a moment. "You did this to him?" he asked.

Kara nodded. "I... he was there when I woke up. He asked what had happened, and I... I think I showed him, sir. It wasn't intentional."

Outside the privacy curtain, a phone buzzed, and a medic hurried over to answer it.

A long pause. Then Adama looked to his son. "The Doctor tells me you'll be fit for duty by tomorrow. Do you agree?"

Lee thought about it, and then nodded. "Sounds about right."

Adama turned his attention to Starbuck. The question was plain in his expression.

"Oh, I'm ready sir," Kara said. "And I've got the clean bill of health to prove it."

"I wouldn't exactly call it clean," Cottle said, stepping within the privacy curtain, holding Kara's chart and Lee's, comparing the two. "You're both forming new neural pathways at a rate that's unprecedented outside of childhood. The effect isn't as strong in Captain Adama, but it's still measurable. We don't have any way of knowing how this will affect you, much less your ability to fly a Viper."

Kara glared at the old doctor. "I'm fine," she insisted.

Cottle snorted. "Like hell."

"What's the bottom line, Doctor?" Adama asked.

"The bottom line is that we have no idea what happened or why, but from what Lieutenant Thrace was able to describe for me about her condition, she's developing ... abilities. The sort of abilities that only the Oracles claim to have. I am not a religious man, Commander, but if this is real..."

Lee raised an eyebrow. "So your diagnosis is that she's found religion?"

Cottle smirked at that, as did Kara. "Cute," Cottle said.

"I need my pilots, Doctor. How long till they're able to fly?"

Cottle scowled at that. "Could be an hour from now. Could be never. I have no way of knowing."

A long pause, and then Adama looked to both Kara and Lee. "Report for duty tomorrow at 0800."

Kara grinned, and Lee nodded his acknowledgment, and Cottle? Well, Cottle mostly just looked disgusted, but he didn't contradict the Commander.

"And both of you," Adama said, "Get some rest."

Kara and Lee exchanged glances. It was Lee who replied. "That, I think we can do."

* * *

"DANIEL!"

Daniel came to with a start. He was lying on his back in the grass beyond the entrance to the ruined opera house. His eyes focused slowly on the sight of Vala looking down at him, an expression of panic on her face. "Wha... what happened?"

"You fainted, Daniel. You passed out, and you fell three feet and I shook you and called to you, but you wouldn't respond!"

Daniel reached for his glasses - they had fallen off of his head, and lay beside him in the grass. He put them on, and then sat up. "... Were you worried?" he asked.

Vala glared at him. "Of course I was worried! We're still linked, you know! What happens to you affects me, too. I can't exactly get off of this stupid planet if you're dead, on account of that meaning I'll be dead too!"

Daniel sat up. "I'm... I'm fine. So you didn't see... anything?"

"I saw you walk up these stone steps, step through that threshold, and then fall down the back of it into the grass."

A pause. "... Right. We need to get back to the gate."

Vala frowned. "In case it escaped your notice, Daniel, we still don't have a power source, and there isn't a DHD."

"The way's been opened. We'll be fine." He rose to his feet, then, and walked, heading back towards the glade where the stargate waited. Despite her protests, Vala followed, and when they arrived, she stared in amazement: the gate was open.

Daniel smiled, produced his GDO, and keyed in his code. A moment later, he walked through the event horizon.

"WAIT!" Vala shouted. Too late. He was gone. She stood there on the threshold. She knew there was no way to be sure that this gate led back to Earth. It was idiotic to follow Daniel through it. She should go back to that crashed ship and salvage what she could. She should...

"Damn you, Daniel Jackson!" she cursed, and stepped through the gate, vanishing into the event horizon.

And Kobol went on as it had for two thousand years.

END CHAPTER 03


	4. Chapter 4: Complications

Earthsong  
A Stargate SG-1 crossover fanfic  
by P.H. Wise

Chapter 4: Complications

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to Sci-Fi. I think. So does the new Battlestar Galactica. I am neither Sci-Fi nor any of the other people likely to hold ownership of any of the involved properties. This chapter contains a brief section of dialogue lifted from 'Razor.' I don't own that, either. No copyright infringement is intended: please don't sue me. I'm not making any money off of this.

* * *

Space stretched out around them in all directions, and though none of the crew of the Daedalus had time to notice the incomparable majesty of the cosmos, it lay before them nonetheless. Two ships. Daedalus. Pegasus. Less than specks of dust. Even the moon in whose DRADIS shadow they now sheltered took little notice of the human drama playing out in its orbit. Even that unnamed moon was little more than a speck compared to the star its planet orbited. That star which had burned with nuclear fire for four billion years, which even now oversaw the birth of tiny microbial life forms on the second planet in its orbit - the first of its lifetime - was only one amongst the hundred billion suns which made up the Milky Way Galaxy. The Goa'uld had been content to claim the worlds of the gate network, once, and they had called themselves rulers of the galaxy, but the gate network spanned only the tiniest pittance of worlds within the Milky Way; their empire was a patchwork thing, galactic in scope, and yet so scattered that without the stargates, travel between the stars was a thing of weeks and months. It was easier in the void between galaxies - the further you got away from the warping effects of time and space that a galaxy caused simply by the fact of its existence and the interaction of its mass with space/time, the faster you could go. Even Goa'uld hyperdrives could reach the Large Magellanic Cloud in a year's time, assuming the ship departed from the edge of the Milky Way closest to it.

Hyperdrive was relatively safe. Hyperdrive was familiar. The Daedalus had not arrived at its present location via hyperdrive.

Whatever kind of FTL event the Daedalus had just been caught up in, Colonel Stephen Caldwell made a mental note never to ever subject himself or his ship to it ever again. His head was throbbing, and nausea threatened to overwhelm him. It was pitch black on the bridge. Not even the emergency lights were working. The hum of the C02 scrubbers was gone. Even the artificial gravity was gone. It felt like being in a tomb. Nothing but the sound of your own breathing, and the occasional sigh from a few yards away which told you that you were not alone.

When the emergency lighting came on, and the computer systems began their boot sequences, Caldwell let out the faintest sigh of relief. Emergency lightning should have come on right away - they shouldn't have been left in the dark like that, but at the moment, he was just happy that his ship was still in one piece. Gravity came back a moment later. Then the computers finished their boot up sequence.

"Damage report."

"Significant hull damage on decks four, six, and eight. Decompression in the forward sections. Damage control teams are en route... we lost twenty three airmen, sir."

Caldwell nodded grimly, letting a few seconds pass in silence out of respect for the dead, and then, "Caldwell to McKay. How are our systems looking?"

A pause.

"Ow." McKay sounded worse than Caldwell felt.

"Doctor."

"Right. Systems. Um... looks like we're clear, Colonel."

The bridge crew let out an audible sigh of relief.

"Well done, people," Caldwell announced. "Lieutenant, send our language codes to..."

"Pegasus, sir."

"Pegasus," Caldwell confirmed.

The language codes were in interlac - a purely mathematical language, and one which would, theoretically, be decipherable by any civilization capable of the advanced mathematics required to achieve space flight. It had become the language of choice for first contact situations, and it generally meant that you didn't need to let your linguists study an alien language for months before you got much further than, "Hello." Pegasus had no such protocol - the Colonials hadn't actually run into any non-humans before - but its crew was bright and capable enough: after a few hours, the two ships were finally able to speak to one another.

"This is Colonel Steven Caldwell of the Earth ship Daedalus."

A pause as the translation program on the other end worked through his words, and then displayed them on a computer screen in Colonial Basic. A woman's voice came through, then. Another pause as Daedalus's translation protocols rendered it into English and displayed it on the forward view screen: "This is Admiral Cain of the Battlestar Pegasus. I think we should meet, Colonel. We have a lot to talk about."

"We'll make arrangements to send over a diplomatic party," he said. "We should be ready to transport them over within an hour's time."

Another long pause, and then. "We'll be ready."

There was little else for it, then; the Daedalus erupted into a flurry of activity. Even aside from the preparations for first contact - Caldwell was going to let Doctor Weir handle that one - the ship had been badly damaged, and it had depleted the majority of its ammunition reserves. They were completely out of missiles, though they were busily reloading the railguns with the supplies that had been intended for Atlantis' defenses. Repairs needed to be coordinated, paperwork needed to be filed, and he had lost twenty three airmen. Not counting the fighter pilots who had either died during the battle in orbit of that alien world. They'd been able to recover seven pilots. Four had been killed with their ships. For all that it still rankled that he had been denied command of Atlantis' military assets, right now, he was happy to let Sheppard and Weir handle the diplomatic angle. Hell, maybe he could get the two members of SG-1 in on that, get them out of his hair as well.

Today had not been a good day, and Caldwell was not in any mood to suffer fools.

* * *

"What do we know about these people, anyways?" The newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard was the one who had spoken, but it was a question that burned on the minds of most of those present. Or at least, he was pretty sure it did. Well, Rodney he wasn't so sure about - the guy was kind of busy munching on a sandwich he'd gotten from the mess before the meeting - but the rest of them he was pretty sure.

Colonel Mitchell - and how annoying was that, having three different colonels on the same ship? Getting distracted, John. Focus on the mission. Colonel Mitchell was talking, and Sheppard had to mentally rewind a bit in order to get the beginning of his sentence. "According to the original Tok'ra report, they're called... Colonials." Mitchell thought for a moment. "They're part of an advanced civilization, a few hundred years ahead of where Earth was before the Stargate program."

The others didn't look terribly impressed at that. John certainly wasn't.

Rodney took a bite of his sandwich. "They've clearly got access to some kind of... primitive FTL," he said, talking with his mouth full.

Sheppard gave him a look. Rodney didn't notice.

"Were you able to learn anything on the planet that would help us here?" Weir asked. She didn't comment on Rodney's attitude, or on his talking with his mouth full. But then, she wouldn't. Not unless it got really bad.

"They speak Greek. Crazy blonde chick spoke Greek, at least," Mitchell said. "Andromeda, I mean."

Not particularly helpful. Still, Elizabeth was nodding, so maybe she thought otherwise. Sheppard kind of doubted it. "I don't suppose you've got, say, a copy of that original Tok'ra report handy, do you?" he asked.

"We do not, Colonel Sheppard," Teal'c said. "However, I will attempt to relay what information I can recall from having read it in preparation for our initial briefing prior to our arrival on P3Q-579." A beat. "The civilization is known as the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. They span twelve worlds in three solar systems, one of which is a binary star with an unusually large habitable zone. They possess a form of faster than light travel which is utterly unlike our own hyperdrives - a device apparently based upon the principle of folding space. In light of the state of their capital world, it is likely that the crew of the Pegasus is experiencing something similar to post traumatic stress disorder, as they are, aside from the two humans we witnessed directing the robotic forces on the surface, the only known survivors of their civilization."

Everyone stared at Teal'c for a long moment. "Good memory," Mitchell commented.

"... Right," Sheppard said. "So where does that leave us?"

"In a potentially volatile situation," Weir said, and sighed. "As Teal'c said, these people are survivors of a nuclear holocaust that apparently destroyed their entire civilization. We don't really have anything we can compare it to. America post 9/11 doesn't even come close, and that's the worst things have been on Earth in a long time."

"You shouldn't go over there unarmed, Elizabeth," Sheppard said.

Weir looked as though that was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. "I'm not exactly qualified in the use of firearms, John," she replied. "And I'm not sure what kind of message that would send."

"At least take a zat." He knew she didn't like this idea. She had never been comfortable with violence, but he didn't want her going in there without every possible advantage. "They're pretty foolproof. Turn it on, point it at your target, then squeeze the bottom curve where you hold the gun to fire."

"How would I justify that to our hosts?" She was looking for reasons not to carry a gun. He knew it. She knew it.

"You could say it's a sign of office," Mitchell suggested.

John nodded in agreement. "A sign of office," he concurred.

"You're not going to let this go, are you?" Weir asked. Damn right he wasn't. This way, even if the rest of them had to surrender arms, at least they wouldn't be completely defenseless.

"Nope," John replied.

"Fine," Weir said. "I'll carry a zat."

"I still say we should go over there in encounter suits," Rodney said.

Sheppard glanced Rodney-wards.

"Who knows what kind of diseases these people might have that we don't have any immunity to! Or what diseases we have that they don't have immunity to!"

"Be that as it may," Weir said, "I'm still vetoing encounter suits, Rodney. The ship's sensors haven't detected anything out of the ordinary, and in the event that you do get sick, I'm afraid you'll just have to trust in the medical advances we've made through the Stargate program."

"Right," Mitchell said. "So how about we get this show on the road?"

Weir nodded, rising to her feet. "Two things before we go," she said. "First, while I realize it's unlikely to be an issue, as I'm the only one fluent enough in Greek to communicate with these people? Don't make any promises. Second, Hermiod has requested permission to accompany us to the Pegasus."

Sheppard blinked. "Hermiod?" Even Rodney stopped eating, and looked at Weir curiously.

"Are you sure that's wise, Ma'am?" Mitchell asked.

Sheppard nodded in agreement. "Not that I doubt the little guy's intentions, but if these people really are in as shaky a state as we think, should we really be springing Asgard on them like this?"

Weir wasn't pleased. John could tell. She didn't like the idea of bringing Hermiod, but... "I understand your concerns: I raised them myself when he asked to accompany us, but he insists on coming, and I think we can trust him to behave himself." A beat. "Right. Let's get to the jumper."

"We're not beaming over?" Rodney asked.

John answered for Elizabeth. "We don't exactly know how these people will react to beaming technology, Rodney. Don't want to scare the locals."

"Right."

They were all on their feet, then. The walk to the hanger deck and the waiting puddlejumper didn't take long - it was one of two that Daedalus had carried with it to Earth. The other had been left behind at Area 51. Hermiod met them there, and the little guy didn't say a word, just nodded to Weir as he climbed aboard. Still, it felt good to connect with Lantean technology again, after weeks without it. As he linked with the ship, John Sheppard smiled.

Although it had been a bad day thus far, things were looking up.

* * *

Helena Cain smiled fondly as she started to draw herself away from her lover, but ultimately couldn't resist the urge for one more kiss. Gods but she felt like a teenager around Gina, sometimes. No sooner had she stepped into her quarters to change into her Dress Grays than she'd discovered that Gina was already here. There hadn't been time for sex, but an embrace and a few kisses had not been unwelcome. "Are you coming?" she asked.

"Do you want me to?"

She did. Gina had been one of the very few bright spots of the months since the destruction of the colonies, and Helena wanted her at her side. She didn't reply aloud, though - she just gave Gina a patient look.

"I'll be there," Gina said, her eyes twinkling with amusement, "Just give me a minute." The gray sleeveless tee shirt and brown tank top combo wasn't the most flattering of attire, but Gina made it look good. It took her the full minute to get into her ISE uniform; Cain managed her own dress uniform in half the time.

"Do you think they're really from Earth?" Gina asked.

"We'll see," Helena replied. Earth. In her wildest dreams, she'd never expected to encounter a ship claiming to come from Earth. It raised a million questions. Why had the Thirteenth Tribe waited so long before making contact? Had their attention been drawn by the nuclear holocaust? Were they prepared to wage war against the Cylons to avenge their brothers and sisters? Just how different was their technological base, considering that a ship a ninth the size of Pegasus had managed to hold its own against two basestars? And that was just scratching the surface. Earth. There were _theological _implications to this, if it was true. Helena had never been much of a believer herself, but it did raise... questions.

She buttoned up her tunic, then, and secured the leather sash into place over it. She didn't ask how she looked. She didn't need to. Gina probably sensed the mood she was in, because she didn't press her, didn't try to draw her into conversation. She let her think. Helena appreciated that.

Half a minute later, without so much as a hair out of place, Helena Cain opened the hatch to her quarters and stepped out into the hallway, and Gina Inviere followed close behind.

It had been one hundred and sixty eight days since the fall of the colonies. One hundred and sixty eight days since the attack on the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards, and the blind jump that she'd been sure would kill them all, but had ordered anyways, under the thought that a one in a million chance of survival was better than none. One hundred and sixty five since Helena had almost made the greatest mistake of her career.

"Admiral," Jurgen had said, "The Cylons knew we were coming. We have to recover the Vipers and jump out of here while we still can."

No. She couldn't. She wouldn't. "No," she said. "Scramble the reserves. Order them to provide cover while Blue attacks the target."

"They'll be outnumbered four to one."

She knew. She knew, but she couldn't let it go. Besides, they could do this. She knew her crew, and her ship. It would cost them, but they could do this.

"A squadron of Raiders has broken off. They're now inbound." That was Shaw. Kendra Shaw. Lieutenant. Here because she probably saw this job as a stepping stone to a better one. She'd be a good officer, once she got some experience under her belt. Not that any of that mattered now.

"Activate defensive batteries."

Nothing. Silence. Sabotage. Someone had sabotaged her ship. She felt that old familiar rage building in her. Burning like fire.

"They're not responding," Shaw announced, a note of panic in her voice. "The network's locked us out of our weapons grid."

"Have the gun crews assume manual control."

"Admiral," Jurgen said, "We are hugely outnumbered, and now our weapons grid won't respond. What more proof do we need that this is a trap?"

"All the more reason to launch everything we've got," she'd replied.

He moved in closer, his voice lowering, "This is exactly what you said we wouldn't do. Even if we succeed, is this really worth the lives the plan would cost?"

Her fury had spiked. He must have seen it in her eyes, then, because that was the first time she'd ever seen her XO afraid of her - really afraid of her, but he didn't back down. She had a split second to make her choice. To fully commit, or to follow his advice. She wanted to commit. She wanted to make the Cylons **pay. **Everything within her screamed for vengeance. Blood must be paid. In that moment, she saw what might have been: she saw herself ordering Jurgen Belzen to give her his sidearm, saw herself taking it, saw herself shooting him in the head in front of the whole crew, and some dark part of her reveled in the thought.

No. Helena Cain might be many things, but she was not a monster, and she would not go down that road. She let out a long, slow breath. "... Recall Vipers," she announced. "Prepare to jump the ship."

Jurgen nodded, moving quickly to carry out her orders, and she prayed he never knew just how close she had been to killing him.

The walk to the hanger bay didn't take long. Five minutes to get from one side of the ship to the other. Another five to get the assembled crew in order and ready to receive the diplomatic team from the Thirteenth Tribe. Jurgen was already there, and Fisk, and Shaw, and Hoshi, and a line of pilots, with a striking, tall, freckled woman with short red hair amongst them. The deck crew. A few crewmen from the engine room. Marines on guard all around. Master Sergeant D'anna Argyros standing at her side, rifle in hand. Gina was a few rows back and to her left, next to her twin sister, Natalie Inviere - they'd both been assigned to the Pegasus refit project before the fall of the colonies. She recognized the faces, even if she didn't know all of the names.

In the wake of the sabotage of the defensive batteries, there had been a full investigation of the matter. It had not taken long to discover that the code used to access the system and deactivate the batteries had been Kendra Shaw's, who had immediately admitted to having given her access code to Gina. Gina had tearfully confessed to having written down the code on her personal data assistant... which operated on an unsecured wireless network. The fact that the actual camera records of the computer console from which the sabotage had been carried out had been deleted helped no one involved, but when the investigation concluded that Gina's PDA did show signs of having been hacked by the Cylons during the battle, she'd had no choice but to sentence both Gina and Lieutenant Shaw to serve time in the brig: Shaw for thirty days, Gina for sixty. More was called for, perhaps, but Cain believed it had been an honest mistake, and she'd used it as an example of exactly why security protocols were so important. There had not been a breach of security since. Things had been tense for a while with Gina after that - trust was not a thing that was easily repaired, but eventually, Gina had won her over. Not that Cain would ever, ever let it happen again. She might forgive, but she never forgot.

A faint but distinctive hum was the first sign of the Earth shuttle - it grew louder as the elevator descended, carrying the vessel from the flight pod to the pressurized hanger deck, but it never got much louder than a hum. Then the ship came into view, and it was damned odd: it was basically a large cylinder with two... drive pods on ether side, which even now were retracting into the body of the ship. It had a large window in the front through which human faces could be seen.

The reality of the event settled over the assembled crew: the Thirteenth Tribe was real, and they were **here**.

There was a faint hiss as the hatch at the rear of the oddly shaped shuttle opened, descending neatly downwards to form a ramp for those exiting. Her crew stood at attention, and she ruthlessly suppressed the urge to stand on her tiptoes to get a better view in through the forward window.

A pair of soldiers emerged, each wearing a dark blue uniform with black boots and a black armored vest over it, each carrying a rifle, each with a pistol holstered at their right thigh, each with a combat knife on the left hip. A man and a woman. On the sleeve of the man was a flag dominated by red and white stripes, except for a blue field with white stars in the upper left. On the sleeve of the woman was a flag with a red leaf she didn't recognize set on a field of white, bordered on either side by red bars.

Then came the pilot - a handsome man with dark, slightly spiked hair. He too carried a rifle, though it hung from a strap across his shoulder. A man in a greyish uniform set with blue, and another of those red leaf flags on his shoulder. A distinctive man with dark skin, short black hair, a strange gold tattoo on his forehead, and an impressive number of muscles. Then a man in a green uniform with a black vest, and a strange unit patch on his shoulder with a symbol that seemed vaguely familiar. He and the man with the golden tattoo wore the same uniform, and each carried rifles. Next emerged what Helena could only assume was the diplomat: a handsome woman with dark hair and green eyes in a blue and red uniform, the red white and blue flag on her shoulder, a peculiar serpentine weapon holstered at her hip.

And then a small, gray, naked, humanoid creature with large black eyes, an enlarged cranium, and no sexual characteristics whatever emerged from the ship and stood beside the others.

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that ensued, every single person on the deck staring at the alien creature in complete shock. All her carefully prepared comments vanished from her mind as Helena stared at the Asgard. Every eloquent word. Every line of the speech she'd intended to make. Instead, she managed: "What the frak?"

So say we all.

The Earthers were shooting the diminutive alien recriminating looks, then, though it? He? seemed unphased by them. The diplomat stepped forward, then. She spoke Kobolian, but her words were strange. Less awkward and stilted than the comm officer they had communicated with earlier, but definitely strange. Her words were a bizarre mix of archaic and unknown idioms, and though Helena could follow it, it made her eyes water to do so. "I am Doctor Elizabeth Weir," she said, "A representative of the United Nations of the planet Earth." She offered her hand. "On behalf of the crew of the Daedalus, I would like to offer our gratitude for your timely intervention."

No mention of their place as the Thirteenth Tribe, but Helena wasn't going to press that particular issue. She recovered her composure with a speed that surprised even herself, going from stark incredulity to cool professionalism in less than a second, and she too stepped forward, shaking the proffered hand. Her handshake was firm, but not tight enough to pinch; Doctor Weir's grip was less firm, but not the simple placement of hand in hand that she might have expected. "On behalf of the officers and the crew of the Pegasus, I accept. Welcome aboard."

It was done. Formality had been attended to, and every Colonial in the room knew it. A cheer went up from the Pegasus crew, and all at once, they moved forward, giving voice to their joy and their relief at seeing their first friendly faces in over a hundred days. The Earthers seemed to tense for a moment, but quickly relaxed, and it became a blur of hands shaken and shoulders clasped, clapping and hugs.

* * *

"Admiral, allow me to introduce my team." It had been a little awkward since their arrival: the Colonials were apparently a more passionate people than her team was used to encountering, but they had pulled through with an admirable level of composure - even Doctor McKay - and Elizabeth was proud of them for that. They'd been brought to a small conference room. The design, the feel of the ship was totally different from Daedalus. Daedalus felt like... well, like a starship. Pegasus felt like an aircraft carrier. Or maybe a submarine. And there weren't any windows. It was an odd thing to miss, but Weir had grown used to being able to see the stars wherever she went, and here... the Colonials, it seemed, either had little interest in viewing the stars, or lacked the technology to do it safely on a 'battlestar.' She gestured to each team member in turn. "This is Lieutenant-Colonel Sheppard and Doctor McKay. Also Colonel Mitchell and Teal'c." A beat. "And of course, this is Hermiod of the Asgard, whose people are one of Earth's greatest allies."

"Hermiod," Cain echoed, staring at the little creature once more.

Hermiod inclined his head. "Greetings," he said. Doctor Weir translated for him a moment later.

Then the Admiral was making her own introductions. "My XO, Colonel Belzen." A handsome man in his late thirties, clean shaven, with dark hair and an honest face. "Lieutenant-Colonel Fisk." She indicated an older, heavy set man with graying hair. "Lieutenant Shaw." A lovely if severe young woman possibly of Asian descent. The ethnicities and apparent language groups (if their names were anything to go by) displayed in the crew of the Pegasus were interesting. Normally, a Goa'uld transplanted community was taken from one ethnic group, but here... either the ancestors of these humans had either been taken from a wide range of Earth's territory, or they had at some point during their past separated into distinct breeding populations. Possibly both. There was probably a research paper in there, somewhere, but that was a matter for another time.

Weir produced a dark wine bottle filled with a green liquid - Hermiod had said it was a particularly fine variety of Asgard drink, close in chemical structure to human wine. She and John had tried some a few days prior, and both had thought it agreeable enough. "Among Earth cultures," she said, holding out the bottle, "It is customary to present a gift to one's hosts at the start of a meeting like this."

The Admiral raised an eyebrow. "Ambrosia?" she asked, taking the bottle in hand. Weir smiled, and after a moment, Cain handed the bottle off to her XO. "Thank you, Doctor," Cain said.

Unnoticed by any of the others, Hermiod produced a small teardrop shaped device and pressed it against his chest. It seemed to have some kind of adhesive on the back of it, because when he removed his hand, it remained where he had placed it.

Elizabeth smiled warmly. "I'm sure you're all wondering what brought us to the planet we've labeled as P3Q-579..."

"Caprica, Ma'am, and yes, we are." It was Lieutenant Shaw who spoke, and her accent was noticeably different from the others. Another thing to pique Elizabeth's curiosity. Another thing she had to ignore for the time being.

"Caprica," Elizabeth repeated. A beat. "Colonel Mitchell will explain."

All eyes went to Cameron, then, and he began to relay his tale, with Doctor Weir serving as translator. He was perhaps halfway through his tale when he was stopped by Admiral Cain. "Stargate?" she asked.

Mitchell nodded. "You might know it by another name. It was in the museum, so I figure you've gotta have some kind of name for it."

Teal'c spoke up, then. "Chappa'ai, perhaps. Or the Ring of the Gods."

"What he said. Kind of a ring thing, comes with a dialer, you hit the symbols, it spins around and lights come on, it kind of flushes sideways..." Weir looked visibly annoyed at that, but managed to render it into something less undignified when she translated it. Or at least, she hoped she did.

The Colonials exchanged looks.

"You mean the Astria Porta?" Shaw asked. The Colonials all seemed to recognize that word.

They didn't need a translation for that one, and Elizabeth didn't give one. Astria Porta. That was the word the Ancients had used for the stargates. Almost exclusively. If the Colonials knew it by that name... the SGC had already established that the Goa'uld had not been the only group to take populations from Earth. Perhaps the Ancients had done so as well, after the fall of Atlantis? Perhaps not. That didn't mesh particularly well with their worship of the Greek gods and goddesses, though - the presence of Greek deities amongst the ranks of the Goa'uld had long since been confirmed. It was a thing to think about, at least, and by the looks her people were exchanging, they thought so too. "The Astria Porta," Weir confirmed.

The story went on, then, stopping only one more when Mitchell described the presence of human collaborators on Caprica: a woman named Andromeda and a man who called himself 'Number Four.' Clearly a code name. All the Colonials were disgusted by the thought of collaborators, though they indicated that it did explain a lot - especially about how the Cylons had managed to do what they did. What was even more disturbing was that Mitchell and Teal'c both claimed that they'd seen two women nearly identical to 'Andromeda' and Sheppard swore he'd seen possibly a sister of theirs with red hair among the pilots. Weir opted not to translate those claims, though; no need to spook them… yet.

Once Mitchell had finished his tale, Elizabeth took a moment to let it sink in before she spoke again. "I don't pretend to fully understand your situation, but if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'll attempt to lay out what we know so far, and you can fill in the rest from there."

At Cain's nod, Elizabeth continued. "We understand that your civilization has suffered a catastrophic nuclear attack, and that it has resulted in the destruction of at least one of your worlds. Based on your lack of support vessels, we presume that you are either on special assignment, or that the majority - perhaps all - of your fleet was destroyed in the initial assault. Right so far?"

Cain nodded once more. "... It wasn't just one world. It was every world. All twelve colonies. The Cylons gave no warning before they attacked, and they took us completely by surprise."

"We are sorry for your loss," Elizabeth began, only for Cain to cut her off, eyes flashing. "Sorry for our loss?" She asked, her voice filled with an intensity that made the others in the room flinch. "We lost fifty billion people, Doctor. We went from a population of a little over **fifty billion **to less than twelve hundred survivors aboard the Pegasus, and a few thousand more in a fifteen ship refugee fleet whose retreat we covered. You'll forgive me if I don't find your condolences particularly helpful."

Doctor Weir felt like she had been punched in the gut. That was a body count she could barely wrap her mind around, much less contextualize. It was too big. So many dead... she had grown used to the idea of planets with a population of a few hundred thousand. Her thoughts flashed back to her earlier discussion with her crew. America post 9/11? It was almost laughable. The only comparison she could think of would be how she would feel if the entire population of the Earth were destroyed, and even that, she suspected, did not come close. Presently, it occurred to her that her mouth was hanging open, and she shut it with an audible click before she translated Cain's words for the rest of her team. The silence that ensued was almost deafening. At length she found her voice, and it surprised her that it didn't shake. "... I cannot promise anything beyond humanitarian assistance without consulting with my government." she managed.

"Thank you, Doctor Weir," Cain replied, and it occurred to her that there wasn't **life** behind the woman's eyes. Not behind the eyes of any of the Pegasus crew. Not really. "But as I understand it, your ship took considerable damage in the battle against the Basestars. Are you really in a position to be able to offer us aid?"

"I..." Elizabeth forcibly regained her composure, pushing all her horror under the surface, and she was the diplomat again. "Daedalus did take damage, yes, but none of it was crippling. We won't be able to engage our FTL drive for a few days, but our sister ship should be on site before then. Rest assured that what I do offer is offered sincerely, and with the means to accomplish it."

Cain nodded. "Perhaps we can assist you in making those repairs, then. We have no small amount of experience with deep space ship repair, after all. In the spirit of cooperation, I'd like to offer the assistance of the Pegasus and her crew to help in your recovery efforts."

Weir thought for a moment. "While any assistance you can give us would be appreciated, I don't believe it will ultimately be necessary. Still, I will present your offer to Colonel Caldwell. It's his ship, and I can not make decisions that affect its security without involving him. In the meantime, if you draw up a list of what food and medical supplies you need, as well as a brief descriptions of the food items and of what the medicine is intended to do, we should be able to find analogues."

* * *

And with that, it was done. John let out a faint sigh of relief, barely visible to any who weren't watching for it. The meeting was over, and they'd managed not to get themselves blown up or a new sworn enemy or endanger the safety of Earth. That was always a plus. Kind of unusual, too. The linguistic difficulties had made it pretty annoying, but Elizabeth had muddled through.

... and then, even as they were standing up and getting ready to leave, Hermiod spoke, and as he did, the tiny teardrop shaped device he had fitted to his chest glowed fitfully: "Admiral Cain," he said, speaking in English, which was echoed a few seconds later in his own voice from the device on his chest, "It has been a pleasure to participate in these talks. Please accept the condolences of the Asgard people: we too know the pain of losing a homeworld. We are sorry for your loss, and we will do what we can to assist your people."

Dead silence.

Sheppard stared for a long moment, and then: "... Hermiod, is that a universal translator on your chest?"

Hermiod gave Sheppard a slightly snide sort of look, though it was hard to tell on an Asgard, as it looked pretty similar to every other expression he ever showed. ... Unless all he ever showed was a snide expression. Damn, that'd be just like him. "It is indeed, Colonel Sheppard."

Sheppard got a little annoyed at that. Not too annoyed, but annoyed. "And you didn't think to mention that you could just zap a universal translator into existence and save us the trouble of trying to muddle our way through totally different forms of ancient Greek to try to hold a conversation?"

OK, **now** Hermiod looked snide. Or possibly smug. It was smirking, at least, that much John was sure of. "You never asked," the Asgard said.

John glared, and snatched the device from the Asgard's chest. Hermiod replaced it with a second, identical device a moment later, and John glared even harder, and pressed the device in his hand onto his own shirt. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

The others were moving, now. Lieutenant Shaw approached him, then, probably encouraged by the idea of being able to communicate with someone who wasn't Doctor Weir. "So he's... some kind of alien? Asgard, your doctor said?"

The device duly translated, and he smiled a charming sort of smile. "Right. Asgard. They're allies. Sometimes jerks, but still allies."

Shaw lowered her voice to a whisper, then. "Is he supposed to be naked like that?"

John couldn't help but grin at that. "See, that's what I said!"

Hermiod glared.

* * *

_**Earth. Stargate Command.**_

Hank Landry took another slow sip of coffee before lowering the mug back onto his desk. Before him lay Daniel Jackson's classified after-mission report on SG-1's latest boondoggle. Killer robots. Trapped on a distant world. Fascinating Greek-style ruins. Apparent contact with an ascended being come to warn them about a coming darkness. Doctor Jackson had already been debriefed, and was, like the rest of them, waiting for word from the Daedalus. He took another sip, and he might have gone on to finish his coffee had Walter's voice not come over the intercom at that moment. "General Landry? We've got an incoming message from the Daedalus?"

He closed the mission folder, left his coffee mug on his desk, rose to his feet, and walked out into the control room. The wormhole was active at the moment: an ambassador from the Tok'ra had only just departed, and hadn't THAT been an interesting conversation? The fact that the Tok'ra intelligence had been over six months out of date, and that the civilization they'd reported had been destroyed in the meantime had not endeared them to anyone, nor given him a particularly rosy view of their intelligence gathering capabilities, but that was neither here nor there. "Put it through," he ordered.

The image of Stephen Caldwell appeared on the monitor. He was using his ready room for the transmission, it looked like. "General Landry, sir, the Daedalus has successfully retrieved Colonel Mitchell and Teal'c from the surface of P3Q-579."

That brightened his day considerably, and he couldn't help but grin. "Well done, Colonel. What's your estimated arrival time at Atlantis?"

"I'm afraid that part of our journey is going to be a little delayed, sir. There have been significant... complications."

Hank raised an eyebrow.

As Caldwell explained, covering the battle over Caprica, its aftermath, and both Daedalus and Pegasus' current situation in orbit of a small moon some thirteen light years away from the place they'd started, Hank felt himself suppressing the urge to swear. He thought for a long moment. "I'll send your report along to Homeworld Security. ... And to the IOA. I'm sure they'll just be brimming with helpful advice on how to deal with the situation."

Caldwell smiled faintly at that. "Should we expect relief from the Prometheus, sir?"

"They're still two days out. Can you hold your present position until they arrive?"

"That might be a problem, sir. We've expended the majority of our ordinance in battle with the Cylon fleet, and while Cylon technology doesn't measure up to the Goa'uld or the Asgard tech that we've got installed on the Daedalus, I'd prefer not to go into battle before we can resupply."

Walter spoke up, then. "Sir, according to our database, there's a stargate on the first planet of the solar system that the Daedalus is sheltering in. If we use both the jumper here and on Daedalus, we should be able to ferry out whatever supplies they need."

The General nodded. "Make it happen, Walter." He looked to the screen. "We'll have the Prometheus pick up a diplomatic team at one of the gates between her current position and yours. Two days travel should give them the time they need to prepare for negotiations with this Admiral of the Pegasus. In the meantime, learn what you can about the Colonial ship, try to get them to trust you... and try not to let SG-1 blow up any suns."

Caldwell smirked at that. "I'll see what I can do, sir."

"I'm sure you will, Colonel. Landry out."

The line cut off. A moment later, Landry rose to his feet. "Walter," he began.

"Send a copy of that report to Homeworld Security and the IOA? Already on it, sir."

Landry smiled a bemused smile. "Carry on, Walter."

* * *

Two days passed slowly in moon's DRADIS shadow. Cain and those on Pegasus were informed that contact had been made, and that a second ship would arrive soon. Ammunition and missiles had begun to be ferried up to Daedalus by cloaked jumper from the stargate on the first planet in the solar system, and though the journey was two hours each way, there were enough ATA positive pilots to keep the jumpers running round the clock. True to Weir's word, food and medicine began shipping to the Pegasus - the medicine mostly painkillers and antibiotics, a few crates of morphine, that sort of thing, and only after ensuring that the Colonials didn't have any major allergies to the items in question.

The Cylons hadn't found them, though there had been a lone raider performing reconnaissance in the system in the early morning of the second day which had jumped away without spotting the two human ships. In general, things went smoothly, with the repairs of Daedalus' hyperdrive coming along on schedule, and the Pegasus observing every single thing the smaller ship did, and measuring every emission it made.

The Prometheus arrived at 13:22 hours Eastern Standard Time. Lionel Pendergrast rose from his seat on the bridge. "Open a channel to the Daedalus," he ordered. A moment later, "Daedalus, this is Colonel Pendergrast of the Prometheus. Much as I enjoy the sight of a wave of fighters bearing down on us, can you confirm our identity and have the Colonials stand down?"

A few seconds passed, and then the response came through: a woman's voice said, "Prometheus, Daedalus. Be advised that the Colonials have been informed of your arrival and are standing down. We're glad to see you, sir."

Pendergrast smiled. "Roger that, Daedalus. Over and out." The channel deactivated with a click, and then the Colonel looked to his communications officer. "Inform Doctor Jackson and Mr. Woolsey that we've arrived, and that they can report to the ring room at their leisure."

* * *

_**Daedalus. Unknown System.**_

"Jackson!" Mitchell called enthusiastically, moving up to clap the other man on the shoulder. "Welcome back! Glad to see you aren't dead again, even if it did cost me ten bucks."

Daniel, Vala, and Richard Woolsey had only just stepped off of Daedalus' ring platform, and even now a second group was transporting in behind them.

"The band's all together again," Daniel replied warmly. "Except for Sam, that is." He looked to Teal'c. "Teal'c," he said in acknowledgement.

Teal'c smiled and inclined his head. "It is agreeable to see you unharmed, Daniel Jackson. Particularly so in light of the substantial monetary reward I am owed by both Colonel Mitchell and Vala Mal Doran."

Vala's face fell at that. "... I was hoping you'd forgotten about that."

Daniel blinked. "Wait, you were taking bets on whether or not I'd died again?"

Mitchell grinned. "Hey, don't be like that, Jackson. Not like a minor case of death ever stopped you, right?"

Daniel shrugged. Now that he thought about it, Mitchell probably had a point.

Doctor Weir spoke next: "Welcome aboard Doctor Jackson. Ms. Mal Doran. Hello, Richard." She held out her hand towards Woolsey.

Woolsey looked about nervously, as if he expected something to jump out and bite him at any moment. When Weir spoke to him, he started, then forced himself to be calm, reached out, and shook Doctor Weir's hand.

"Something the matter, Woolsey?" Mitchell asked.

Woolsey looked embarrassed. "... It's my first time off world," he admitted.

Mitchell nodded. "Need a moment?" They'd been walking throughout their conversation, on the way to the bridge, but now Mitchell held up a hand, bringing the group to a stop in front of the open door to the Commissary: a window set against the far wall through the doorway drew Woolsey's attention. He walked over to it and peered out at the universe. The moon the Daedalus was in orbit of loomed large through the window, taking up a good three quarters of the view. Pegasus, now some two hundred kilometers away, was a speck in the distance to the naked eye, though the occasional 302 could be seen more clearly as a pair of the fighter/interceptors maintained a CAP around Daedalus and Prometheus.

At length, Richard Woolsey took a deep breath and turned around. Two days on the Prometheus and he still hadn't gotten over the shock of being in space. He smiled a little ruefully, and when he spoke, he was considerably more calm than he had been when he arrived. "All right. I'm ready to go."

* * *

Things began to move quickly, then. A second meeting was called with Admiral Cain and her senior staff, this time to be held on board the Daedalus. After each member of Cain's party had been subject to extensive scans and had been directed to walk through a modified anti-replicator field to no effect, they were given the nickel tour before being brought to a large open room dominated by rectangular conference table, with windows looking out into space against the far wall. By now, Hermiod had created enough of the translator devices for every member of the Earth delegation to have one: so it was that the second meeting of Earth and the Colonials began.

Admiral Cain, Lieutenant-Colonel Fisk, and Lieutenant Shaw were seated first, and they did not need to wait long: a few minutes after their arrival in the conference room, the door slid open with a hiss, and Richard Woolsey, business-suit clad, bespectacled and balding, stepped inside, with Daniel Jackson and Doctor Weir at his side. He smiled politely as the Colonials rose to their feet in response to his entrance.

"Admiral Cain," Doctor Weir began, "Lieutenant-Colonel Fisk, I'd like to introduce you to Richard Woolsey and Doctor Daniel Jackson."

"Mr. Woolsey," Cain murmured, nodding in recognition. "Doctor Jackson."

"A pleasure to meet you both," Woolsey said, shaking hands first with Cain and then with Fisk before settling down into his seat across the table from them. "I have been authorized to negotiate on behalf of the nations of the Stargate Alliance." Daniel settled into a seat to Woolsey's left, Weir to his right.

"I wish that there were a Twelve Colonies left to negotiate with," the Admiral replied. "But as the sole remaining Rear Admiral of the Colonial Fleet, I hereby request that the Thirteenth Tribe engage in a campaign of liberation for the Twelve Colonies, to evacuate any human survivors, and to assist in their relocation to the planet Earth."

Woolsey exchanged baffled looks with Doctors Weir and Jackson.

"Thirteenth tribe?" Daniel asked.

Cain nodded slowly. "That would be you." At their continued uncomprehension, Cain frowned. "Surely you have records of your people's departure from Kobol?"

Daniel's thoughts flashed back to the world he and Vala had been stranded on. Kobol. ... Oma had given that name. He shook his head. "As far as we know, humanity began on Earth. I did some research on the planet 'Kobol,' though, and as as near as I can tell, no Earth civilization made reference to it in any of their records. The closest I've been able to come was the concept of 'Kolob' in the Mormon religion, which is said to be the star nearest to God." He paused a moment before going on. "Abraham saw the stars," he said, "That they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; ...and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest."

Cain, Fisk, and Shaw stared at him for a long moment. Then Shaw replied, speaking as one who is quoting scripture. "Pythia looked upon the worlds, saw that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto Mount Olympus and the throne of Zeus. ... and Zeus spoke, saying, "The name of that great world is Kobol, for it is near to the gods: we are the Lords of Kobol, and it was there that Prometheus created your kind out of the clay. We have set this world to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which you stand."

Now it was Daniel's turn to stare. He had stood against self-declared gods. He had traveled from one side of the galaxy to the other. He had died ... he wasn't sure how many times. Three? Four. And of all the things he'd seen, nothing had prepared him for the idea of a race of spacefaring Greek-Pagan-Space-Mormons. "... What?" he managed, truly stunned. A beat passed, and he asked it again, this time with even more incredulity in his tone, if that were possible: "What?"

Fisk grinned, and even Cain seemed amused at that.

Woolsey shook his head. "Unexpected religious parallels aside, what you are asking for may be beyond our ability to provide. The galaxy is a turbulent place, and Earth had enemies enough before the Ori began their campaign of forced conversion." He looked Cain in the eye. "What I can offer you right here and now is humanitarian assistance, as well as sanctuary for you, your ship, and your crew, on Earth or on one of its associated worlds, subject to the approval of and oversight of whatever nation is to host you. We would expect to receive some limited access to your ship and its technology, and you would be expected to assist in the defense of the Earth should it come under attack, but the Pegasus would remain the sovereign property of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Is this acceptable?"

"I'd like to make a counter-proposal, Mr. Woolsey," Cain said. "In exchange for giving you limited access to my ship and to Colonial technology, you not only grant me sanctuary, but access to Earth's weapons technology. The destructive power of the nuclear devices the Daedalus employed in its battle with the two Base Stars was simply unparalleled, and if the speed of your projectiles is any indication, you've managed to miniaturize your rail gun technology to the point that it can be fitted onto a fighter. Not to mention the strength of the armor you use appears to be somewhat better than our own. Equip us with your technology, and we won't need anywhere near the assistance we might have otherwise in retaking our colonies and rescuing any survivors that there may be."

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "And then what?"

"What do you think?" Cain asked. "We make the Cylons pay for what they did to us."

"How?"

Cain's eyes flashed with fury. "Don't think I don't know where you're going with this, Doctor Jackson. We're at war, and we've already lost fifty billion people! We have an obligation to the dead which cannot be denied. What's more, the Cylons aren't going to stop with our colonies: they're out to wipe out every human in the galaxy. This isn't just about balancing the scales, this is about the survival of the human species! Don't you dare try to set up some kind of moral equivalency: they're machines. Frakking genocidal machines. Nothing more, nothing less."

"You were at war," Daniel replied. "... and you lost. Are you really going to spend the lives of your crew in pursuit of vengeance?" At the intense glares of everyone from the Pegasus side of the table, Daniel sighed, suddenly feeling very old and very tired. "... Lya was right," he murmured. It felt so very strange for the shoe to be on the other foot now. To be in the position of being the advanced race that desperate people came to begging for advanced technology. He didn't care for it at all.

Weir broke in, then, "Admiral, Doctor, please. I think we all need to take a step back, take a breath, and reassess what we're trying to do here."

Cain took that breath. She looked to Woolsey, and for a moment, Daniel was convinced she was going to leap over the table to throttle the man. She didn't. When she spoke, her voice held the faintest note of despair. "Humanitarian aid," she said. "... Sanctuary."

Woolsey looked uncomfortable. "It's the best we can do, Admiral."

"No ships. No fighters. No weapons. No soldiers to come in on our side..."

Only Daniel was able to meet Cain's gaze, then. The others all looked away. "I think I can say with some certainty that we **will** make an effort to save as many as we can from the surface of your colonies. ... but we can't fight a war for you. We're already spread too thin."

The Admiral sank down into her seat, and the weight of what had happened, the weight of the decision she had to make seemed to settle onto her shoulders, and in that moment, she looked every one of her forty nine years. "... I want comparable access to your technology in turn," she said at last.

Woolsey, Daniel, and Elizabeth all exchanged looks. It was Woolsey who answered, however: "Understand that access to our weapons technology is strictly controlled, and that there are certain technologies that we cannot share simply because they are not ours to share, but on loan from our allies, who have sent observers onto our ships to ensure that we use their gifts well and wisely."

Cain was no slouch. She raised an eyebrow. "Hermiod?"

Woolsey nodded. "With those caveats, and with the understanding that our diplomatic teams will be working out the details to draw up a written document over the next couple of days with further input from the IOA, Earth can agree to that."

Cain nodded her assent. "If that's the best that the Thirteenth Tribe can do."

And it was done. The alliance was made, and all that remained was to draw up the treaty and have it ratified by the IOA and its member countries. As for Daniel, he did not stay to mingle with the Pegasus staff. Instead, he made his way back to his quarters, brushing off Vala's attempt to cheer him up when she met him half way, sat down on his bed, and said, "We never learn."

Vala spoke from the doorway, then. "Penny for your thoughts," she said.

Daniel shook his head. "Not now, Vala."

She stepped into the room. "What? I can't be concerned for you? Must I always have a hidden agenda or some intent to bring the situation around to mockery?" She shook her head. "Do you really think so little of me?"

He met her gaze, then. He saw the vulnerability there. A level of openness that she **never** showed. The compassion in her eyes.

How about that? Vala Mal Doran. All at once, Daniel felt an overflow of warmth and affection for the difficult, prickly woman, and he smiled. "Thank you."

Vala smiled back. "Don't mention it."

* * *

Petty Officer Second Class Natalie Inviere, or the number Six model currently posing as Gina Inviere's sister, was another of the Integral Systems Engineering crew who had been conscripted in the wake of the Cylon attack. She wasn't lucky enough to have been chosen as an officer: Gina had landed that bit. ... and then had landed in the brig for sixty days for her 'carelessness in placing the ship's access codes on a device that could be accessed remotely.' That had surprised her, to be honest: she'd expected Gina to be executed for treason over that one, but humans were always willing to believe what they wanted to believe, and when given a choice between malice and incompetence, tended to interpret things as being the result of incompetence. If she had been the one responsible, she'd happily have been executed. It would have gotten her off this damned ship and back to civilization. Cylon civilization, that is. And away from Gina, who seemed more and more human every day.

Under the terms of the still unratified treaty with the Thirteenth Tribe, Pegasus was to be allowed some limited access to Earth technology; as a sign of good faith, three people from each crew were being allowed to familiarize themselves with certain aspects of the other's technological base. Natalie was one of the two who had been chosen. The second had been Kendra Shaw. ... and God help her, the third had been Lillith - Tara Quinn, that was, a sleeper agent also of the Six line who genuinely believed that she was actually a poor unfortunate girl from Tauron whose parents had been murdered in a bombing when she was nine, supposedly on account of having been descended from one of the Virgon families that ran the occupation of Tauron, back in the day. She was a little different in appearance from the standard Six model - a different complexion, naturally red hair that she kept short, freckles, green eyes. An inch shorter than the standard model. She'd lose all that when she downloaded, of course. It was typically the biggest adjustment that infiltration models had to go through when they finally, inevitably died.

On a ship the size of Pegasus, her presence hadn't been a problem. With a crew of over a thousand, the fact that she looked like she could be related to Gina and Natalie was only... inconvenient, and people only really noticed if they were in the same room together. Here, now... this could get dicey. Natalie hoped that the hat and the makeup she was wearing would conceal her appearance sufficiently.

They'd been stopped at the airlock and subjected to some kind of energy curtain. The Earthers called it an... A.R.G.? Whatever it was, it hadn't done more than tickle, so she assumed it was harmless. From there she and the other team members had been split up, and a pair of Earther marines had escorted each of them to the areas that had been set up for them.

The lab she'd been assigned to was a bit spartan. Less with the comfortable, more with the functional. Fine. She could respect that. It reminded her of being on a Cylon vessel, actually, and it gave her the opportunity to project herself into a warm, sunlit forest. It amused her to see Doctor McKay working at a computer terminal set within the trunk of a massive hollowed out redwood, its interior scorched by a fire that occurred some decades before, and completely overgrown with poison oak, and she found herself wondering what he might think if he could share her vision of their barren little lab. Her own work station, which consisted of a desk plus a portable computer that the McKay had called a 'lap top' was a few yards distant, set amidst a small brook. Her socks and her combat boots were in the corner of the lab - or on the bank of the noisy brook, as she saw it, and the feel of the cold water on her bare feet as she worked in contrast to the warm sunlight was... invigorating.

"Doctor McKay?" she asked. He had only just loaded something into her terminal via something he called a 'USB thumb drive,' and it hadn't taken her long to discover that her terminal had no access to the rest of the ship's network.

He started, and then turned to look her way. "Uh, hi. I mean yes?" He had a strange, tear-drop shaped device attached to his tunic that translated his speech into Kobolian in his own voice, but it didn't quite carry the emotional tone across - still, she managed, listening to the initial words for emotional cues, then the translated words for meaning.

Natalie smiled an amused sort of smile. "Maybe you could explain exactly what I'm looking at?"

"Uh... right," he said. "I was going to do that. Er, soon." A beat. "I was... just giving you the chance to familiarize yourself with our, um, systems. It's called 'Mac OS X.'" He was cute when he was flustered. In an annoying sort of way. ... Oh God, did she really just think that?

"I got that," she said. "But given that I've never used one of your computers before, and I don't actually know your language, maybe you could give me a hand here until I get the hang of it."

"Oh. Uh... of course." He moved over to her terminal, then, his feet splashing through the water as he approached. He didn't notice, of course. To him, it was just an empty lab. He gave a brief explanation of the operating system, then. It took him about a minute, and by the end of it, he'd managed to make her feel simultaneously flattered and insulted. ... In about equal measure. Finally, he'd sighed and said, "Look. You're a computer expert, right? What I've just told you should be more than enough to get you started. Finish familiarizing yourself with the system, and then take a look at the information on the thumb drive and tell me what you think."

Right. No problem. She just had to figure out an alien computer system working off of a one minute long primer. Easy. Like falling off a bicycle. ... Or was that 'riding a bicycle?' She could never recall. All at once, a bald man on a bicycle came pedaling through her Projection. ... Damn. Maybe it was better not to get distracted. With a moment's concentration, the bald man vanished, and Natalie focused on the task at hand. Right. Graphics based interface. Keyboard. A strange device to the right of it that, when she moved it, seemed to move the cursor on the screen as well. Rodney had called it a... mouse? ... Right. Time to get to work.

Some ten minutes later, she had worked out enough of the basics of how to operate the system to access the 'thumb drive,' though she had to admit that it was more through guess and check than anything else; she didn't understand the language at all, and she'd had to ask McKay for explanation six times, and each time he'd been a little more red faced than the time before. She'd repaid him by vastly expanding the growth of poison oak his terminal was situated in. Now, finally, she was able to access the thumb drive, and load up the program he had left for her there.

Immediately, scrolling lines of distantly familiar text filled the screen. OK, what was this now? The virus that the Daedalus had been infected with? And he'd given her access to it? Natalie frowned thoughtfully, her Cylon brain analyzing the text with an efficiency that went far beyond mere human ability. Code. This was the source code. A few clicks of the keyboard rendered the code into 'binary' - a cumbersome if effective base two mathematical language. Her brain processed this far easier than the vaguely familiar text that had initially been displayed. And then her eyes widened. "... What! But this is... this is alive!"

McKay raised an eyebrow. "What?" He glanced at what was on her screen, and his eyes bugged out, and he immediately pulled the drive from the computer. "OK, I *know* I didn't put THAT on the thumb drive!" There was panic in his eyes, then, and he quickly yanked the USB drive and held it up to the light, and the display of the wraith virus vanished from the computer screen. ... the drive was identical to the one he had prepared. "Oh, crap!" he said. Then he was using his radio. "McKay to Sheppard."

Sheppard's voice came through the radio, untranslated for Natalie, but it seemed to satisfy McKay, because a moment alter he replied, "We've got a problem."

Natalie continued to stare at her now blank computer screen, eyes wide as her Cylon brain continued to process what it had seen. And she spoke, her voice coming out as barely more than a whisper: "_...ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ..._"

A single tear traced its way down her cheek.

* * *

Lieutenant Tara 'Lilith' Quinn was nothing if not professional. She had to be: it was all she really had left. She'd felt for a long time now like a dark cloud had settled over her mind. Like she was walking through a fog. If she was honest with herself, she supposed that nobody else aboard the Pegasus had it any better: they were all suffering from varying degrees of post traumatic stress. Still, she had a job to do, and she would do it. She was supposed to be learning about Earth fighter technology. Something called an 'F-302.' ... Which begged the question of why she had yet to be shown the craft. She'd seen them earlier, of course, when she'd flown with Red Squadron to assist the Earth ship. She hadn't thought much of them at the time: as near as she could tell, while they were absurdly durable and could take multiple hits from a Cylon raider's guns, the engines had seemed almost pathetically primitive: aerospikes and a rocket booster, plus an RCS barely deserved the name.

She was currently waiting in a fairly well stocked guest cabin for a Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. It was more luxurious than she was used to, but far less than she'd had on Tauron, before... well, before everything. And it had a large window that opened right up to space. Beautiful as it was, the sight of it annoyed her: it wasn't glass, but it was still a structural weak point. Just one more sign that the Daedalus hadn't really been designed to be a warship. Not really.

Another five minutes. No Sheppard.

She was starting to think they were wasting her time. She wondered if Natalie and Lieutenant Shaw were getting the same treatment. If so, then maybe they'd need to have a talk with the Admiral when they got back. ... It was a little weird, working with Natalie. The resemblance between them really was uncanny, and everyone remarked on it. Back when the Invieres had first come aboard, before the holocaust, she'd actually done a little digging on the subject, but as far as she was able to tell, they weren't related: their similarities really were just a coincidence.

The hatch opened, and Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard stepped into the room. Almost subconsciously, she rose to her feet and was halfway to saluting when it occurred to her that he wasn't actually in her chain of command: she awkwardly lowered her hand back to her side. Damn. He was **really **hot. "You must be Colonel Sheppard," she said.

"Call me John," he said with an easy grin, which she found herself returning.

"Tara," she replied. A pause. "I understand you're here to show me the F-302s?" She was momentarily distracted by the translation device attached to his shirt, but after a moment, she focused back on his abs. ... Er, face. Right. His face.

He looked briefly uncomfortable. "Yeah... about that..."

She waited.

"The ships we've got are actually pretty badly damaged. Moreso than we originally thought. So... it looks like I won't actually be able to show them to you today."

She frowned. "... And the reason you couldn't have sent word to Pegasus beforehand so I wouldn't have had to make the trip over here is?"

He scratched the back of his neck. "The full extent of the damage was only discovered half an hour ago," he said.

... OK, something was clearly up here. But still, it wasn't like she had all that much to do back on Pegasus. Well, besides play triad, drink, frak, wait for the Cylons to attack... She gave Sheppard a considering look. "All right," she said. "... What do you suggest we do instead?"

A pair of marines stepped into the room, guns at the ready, and Tara's eyes widened.

Shepherd met her gaze evenly. "I was thinking we could start with you telling us what you are, and what the hell you were doing on Pegasus."

* * *

"Ms. Inviere?"

Natalie looked up with a shudder. The virus was remarkably similar to the sort of attack used by the Cylons. ... Hell, the programming language was even similar, for all that it was written with a different 'alphabet.' How was that even possible? She looked towards the door, perceiving it as set into the trunk of a particularly massive redwood tree. ... wait, how long had she been here? She'd lost track of time. Lost track of a lot of things. Doctor Weir had entered the room.

"I hope so," Weir said.

Natalie found herself mentally undressing the other woman with her eyes, blushed, and then, with considerably less dignity than she had a moment earlier, asked, "All right. How can I help?"

"Doctor McKay informed me that you had gained access to some highly classified information," Weir said.

Natalie's eyes narrowed. Oh, frak. The virus. She glanced right and left. No one else in the room. Just Weir. If she had to, she could kill her and try to escape. ... it would be a shame to damage a woman as lovely as the Doctor was, though.

"I wanted to get your side of the story before anything else happened. If you wouldn't mind?" Elizabeth gestured to the two chairs in the room. Natalie sat, and Weir did likewise, and some of Natalie's suspicion faded. It helped that Weir spoke Kobolian. Natalie didn't know why that should make someone easier to trust, but it did.

"... I certainly didn't intentionally access the information," Natalie said. "Doctor McKay plugged his 'thumb drive?' into the 'lap top,' told me to familiarize myself with the systems and then access the information there. What I found was..."

"Alive?"

Natalie nodded faintly. "And completely remarkable."

"Was it something that you've seen before?"

"Yes. ... and no. It's familiar. I can't explain it, exactly, it just... seemed like something I knew, once."

Weir's lips compressed to a thin line. "All right. How about another question, then: why were you on board the Pegasus, and exactly how stupid do you think we are?"

Natalie frowned. "Because I worked for..." she trailed off. "Oh." She knew. She KNEW. A long, seemingly endless moment of silence passed. Then Natalie was on her feet, moving so fast she almost blurred towards Weir, intent on snapping her neck and getting out the door as quickly as she could.

And then Elizabeth Weir drew the strange snake-like weapon holstered at her side and discharged it into Natalie's chest. Natalie went out like a light, collapsing to the floor and unconscious even as electricity arced across her body for several seconds afterward.

Elizabeth let out a faint sigh. "Sorry, Ms. Inviere," she murmured to the unconscious woman. Then she opened the door, revealing Rodney McKay and Colonel Caldwell on the other side accompanied by a pair of marines. Elizabeth immediately handed the Zat to Caldwell. "It's done. And I don't think I'll be carrying one of those again any time soon."

Caldwell took the Zat, then handed it off to a marine. "What about the other one?" he asked.

"Lieutenant Quinn?" Elizabeth asked. "John was going to make sure she was taken in."

A beat, and then McKay frowned. "... You left John alone with the hot alien chick?"

Elizabeth and Caldwell exchanged glances. A beat. "He wouldn't..." they said simultaneously. Another beat passed, and Caldwell shook his head. "I'm needed on the bridge. I trust you can deal with this?"

Weir nodded. Caldwell departed.

That was when a slightly mussed Colonel Sheppard rounded a corner down the way and came walking down the corridor.

Both Weir and Rodney gave him a look, and John raised his hands defensively. "I was a perfect gentleman!" he insisted.

Rodney looked dubious at that, but Weir nodded. "Any problems?" she asked.

Sheppard shook his head. "Everything went off without a hitch. I'm pretty sure 'Lilith' didn't suspect anything at all... until I showed up in her guest quarters with two marines."

"What do you think they are?" Weir asked. "Clones? Human form replicators?"

"We hit them with an A.R.G. before they came aboard. They're not Replicators, whatever they are. ... That's assuming they aren't just... identical twins..." Rodney trailed off. "Do you think the red hair and the freckles are fake? Or is it the blonde hair and the lack of freckles that's fake?" A beat. "I'm gonna wonder about that for days."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "I think we have more important things to worry about, Rodney."

John nodded. "Yeah, like explaining to Admiral Cain why we just put two of her people in lockup. Somehow, I don't think telling her 'they gave weird signals on our magical lifesigns detector' is going to impress her very much."

"Not to mention dealing with a very serious breach in security." Weir looked to Rodney. "You're **sure** the drive you prepared contained no such sensitive information?"

"It had PONG on it!" Rodney all but shouted. He'd already been chewed out by Colonel Caldwell on this subject.

"I imagine 'We saw another copy of them on Caprica in charge of a large contingent of homicidal robots' probably wouldn't go over well, either," Elizabeth conceded. "I'll think of something. In the mean time, assuming the other one has also been rendered unconscious?" At John's confirming nod, she went on, "We'll transport them both to the brig."

Rodney nodded along, then looked at the door a little regretfully. "Hmm."

"Something wrong, Rodney?" Sheppard asked.

Rodney shook his head. "Oh... no." John wasn't buying that, and neither was Elizabeth, so he sighed. "I don't know. She was a scientist. I'm a scientist..." He started to blush. "... I kind of have a thing for brilliant, gorgeous blondes..."

"I'm not hearing this," Doctor Weir said, smiling an amused sort of smile as she walked off down the corridor.

"You just figured what?" Sheppard asked.

"... that it would be nice if maybe the hot alien babe could fall into MY lap for a change..." Rodney muttered.

"Wait, what?"

Rodney gave John a look. "You don't get to criticize, Captain Kirk."

John sounded very patient now. "Rodney, it's not like I actually try to seduce every gorgeous alien woman I happen to meet..."

"No, just most of them."

"I do not!"

"You do too!"

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

And Elizabeth, walking away down the corridor, wasn't sure whether to laugh or sigh.

* * *

Weir knew she had to act quickly. It wouldn't be long now before the absence of 'Natalie Inviere' and 'Tara Quinn' was noticed, and John was right: it wasn't likely that Admiral Cain would be understanding about the imprisonment of two of her people. Scans had confirmed that they weren't Replicators, so that was something, at least. Hermiod had been in charge of analyzing the data, and he'd been more than a little tight lipped about it, but had described them as more akin to 'synthetic humans.' The difference between them and a normal human wasn't something that human science could detect, but Asgard? Child's play. While they were indistinguishable from humans on the cellular level, they were not indistinguishable on the molecular. Under examination, Hermiod had detected distinct silica pathways which served the function of neurons in the Cylon brain, plus little... nodules, spread throughout the nervous system which allowed for a kind of ... biological computer with networking capabilities. The security breach complicated the situation further. While Elizabeth believed Rodney's story, she wasn't looking forward to the conversation she was going to have with Woolsey on the subject. The fact that the ... synthetic had recognized the Wraith virus on some level was troubling, but that, along with serious interrogation of the two prisoners, would have to wait until after they'd found the source of the security breach.

It didn't take long.

All of which led to Weir and Caldwell confronting Hermiod in engineering. They had only just laid out the information their team had recovered: transporter logs indicating the replacement of the original USB drive with one of Hermiod's design. He hadn't bothered to make even a token effort to hide his tracks.

"What I don't understand is... why did you do this?"

The Asgard regarded her impassively. "I am not required to explain my actions," he replied.

"To her maybe," Caldwell said coldly, "But this is my ship, and even if you aren't a member of my crew, you are here at my sufferance."

Hermiod looked to Caldwell, and Elizabeth couldn't be sure if he was smiling or not. "That is correct."

Caldwell sounded visibly annoyed now. "Why did you give the synthetic access to the data on the Wraith virus?"

"To test a theory."

Silence. Caldwell and Weir exchanged glances.

"What did you find?" Weir asked.

Now she was sure the Asgard was smiling. They were not an emotional people as a whole, and little could usually be told from tone of voice, but she could swear he sounded proud. Hopeful. "Perhaps, salvation."

How do you reply to something like that? Once again, Weir and Caldwell exchanged glances. "... Oh," Weir said awkwardly.

END CHAPTER 4


	5. Chapter 5: Butterflies and Hurricanes

Once upon a time...

Not the best opening, I know, but bear with me now. We're in need of some exposition, and I wasn't brave enough to use 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.' Mostly because neither of those things are true. Where was I? Right. Once upon a time.

Once upon a time, there was a Goa'uld named Anubis, and he was a particularly nasty one. Oh, they were all pretty bad, but Anubis was hard to match. He was depraved even by Goa'uld standards, and proved to be such a problem for the others that eventually, after he murdered their leader and feasted upon his corpse, Ra and the other system lords launched a three hundred year civil war to defeat him. It wasn't until many thousands of years later that he became a problem for humanity, half-ascended and stuck in a tacky black cloak, and his final defeat was a battle that would become legend, and all Jaffa would marvel at the fierce examples of such heroes as the mighty Teal'c, Bra'tac the cunning, Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, and Samantha Carter, and would come to thank the universe itself that such men and women as these had lived.

Once upon a time, there were butterflies and hurricanes, providence and coincidence. Are they the same? Perhaps they are. But whether by chance, by providence, or by the design of some mortal agency, once upon a time, a butterfly flapped its wings beneath Cheyenne Mountain, and the ensuing hurricane shook the very pillars of creation. Anubis met his end. The Jaffa were freed. The Replicators destroyed. And one of Anubis's ha'taks, Replicator infested and en route to the battle, was caught up in the wave of the Dakara weapon while still many light years away.

Once upon a time, a fleet of refugees fled from the destruction of their worlds. Though all they knew was lost, they wandered ever onwards, drawn by the rumor of safety, in search of a home... called Earth.

* * *

Earthsong  
A Stargate SG-1 crossover fanfic  
By P.H. Wise

Chapter 5: Butterflies and Hurricanes

Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 belongs to Sci-Fi. I think. So does the new Battlestar Galactica. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is Joss Whedon's baby. I  
am neither Sci-Fi nor Joss Whedon. No copyright infringement is intended; please don't sue me. I'm not making any money off of this.

* * *

"DRADIS contact! Three Base Ships, multiple Cylon raiders inbound."

"Damn," Tigh muttered.

"We knew it was only a matter of time before they caught up," said Adama. "Set condition one throughout the fleet and launch the alert vipers. All ships, prepare to jump."

And so it began again, the dance of death. Orders rolled forth from the Galactica's Combat Information Center, and Vipers launched themselves into the cold night against an enemy that would neither relent nor rest in their pursuit of these, the last remnant of the Twelve Colonies. Tiny explosions filled the great dark as Human and Cylon did battle, flaring to life and then snuffed out in an instant when the oxygen that the destroyed ship had contained was consumed in the blast, leaving only scattered bits of debris afterward

It was almost beautiful.

The fleet began to jump, ships vanishing in alternating flashes of red and blue as space was folded. A ship existed in one place, and then it existed in the other, not actually crossing the intervening space. Traveling without moving. Space fold.

"The last civilian ship is away," Dee announced.

Adama nodded. "Recall Vipers. Prepare for jump."

Galactica's Vipers broke off from the battle and retreated for their mother ship, with nearly a dozen nuclear missiles following them in.

"All fighters aboard."

"Execute jump."

The Galactica vanished in a flash of blue light, and the missiles crisscrossed through the space it had just evacuated, and humanity survived another day in the Great Dark.

* * *

The fleet appeared in the midst of a small nebula, surrounded by great spectacular spreads of luminescent gas. And it was not alone. Even as the Galactica arrived, a frenzy of activity began in the fleet as they prepared for yet another jump: an unidentified ship was there waiting for them: possibly a Base Star.

"Any reaction from the unidentified ship?" Adama asked.

"No, sir," Gaeta replied. "Sir, we are detecting minimal energy emissions from the unidentified ship. It is not under power. It appears to be adrift, sir."

Adama thought for a moment, and then he shook his grizzled head. "Hold jump," he said.

Tigh directed a questioning glance his way, and Adama smiled faintly. Tigh shrugged. "All ships, hold jump," he said.

"Launch the alert vipers. Tell the CAP to launch and investigate the unidentified vessel."

A few moments later, Hotdog and Kat were roaring down the launch tubes and out into the bright nebula. In the CIC, the crew watched the DRADIS intently as the two Vipers approached the derelict.

"My gods...!" Kat said over the radio. "What is it?"

"It's beautiful," said Hotdog, his voice full of awe.

"You've got a strange sense of aesthetics, Hotdog," Kat replied.

"Kat, Galactica," Dee said, "What do you see?"

"Galactica, I've never seen anything like it. It's not Colonial and it's not Cylon, but other than that, hell if I know."

"Could it be an Earth ship?" Hotdog wondered aloud.

A few moments passed. "Galactica, Kat," Hotdog said.

"Galactica. Go ahead, Kat."

"This thing is definitely a derelict. No signs of damage, no movement, no signs of movement. Probably a warship - it's got what look like turrets along its superstructure. I count at least forty so far."

Some twenty minutes later, the news was all over the ship. An alien ship, possibly an Earth ship, had been discovered in the nebula. So it was that Starbuck came walking into the CIC even as Adama, Tigh, and Apollo were going over the gun-camera photos that Hotdog and Kat had brought back.

Starbuck glanced down at the photos.

It was an ugly son of a bitch. Some kind of golden tetrahedron core encased within a black triangular superstructure. No visible engines of any kind. Sixty turrets total along the triangular superstructure. Twenty four smaller turrets on the golden tetrahedron for... point defense, maybe? The bottom of the tetrahedron was hollow, and appeared to contain launch tubes. There were also what might be two hanger bay doors on the tetrahedron's surface, but only on one of its three sides. The design was angular, undeniably impressive looking, completely impractical, and utterly alien.

"Huh," Kara said.

It had been five days since the incident in the medical bay, and though both she and Apollo had been kept under observation for three of those days (despite the Commander's insistence that he needed his pilots), Cottle had ultimately found nothing, and had, with no small amount of grumbling, released them both to active duty with orders to report to sickbay immediately should 'anything weird happen.'

Kara would just as soon not. Whatever this thing was that had happened to her, she definitely didn't want to waste her time in sickbay. She kept it under control. Stayed out of people's thoughts. Mostly. ... well, she didn't try to project her own thoughts in their minds.

It was funny. At first, she'd relished the opportunity to find out what people really thought, the things that went unsaid. It wasn't a voice. It wasn't hearing. Hell, it wasn't even always coherent information, nor was it always words. Sometimes it was just a feeling. Sometimes an impression of conceptual types. Sometimes images. And there was nothing about them to distinguish between what was hers and what came from elsewhere, save for contextual clues and the simple fact of who she happened to be looking at at the time. Telepathy had lost its appeal real quick. Which was why when she discovered that she could, if she tried, turn off the ability, she had never been more relieved.

"You sent for me, Sir?" she asked, looking to the Commander.

"We're sending a recon team over to the derelict. I want you and Apollo to fly escort. Land, if possible. Join up with the Marine team, and keep an eye on our scientists."

"Sounds good. When do we leave?"

Lee spoke up, then, "We've got ten minutes till we launch, Starbuck. Might want to get suited up."

Kara looked to Adama, who nodded. She grinned. "Potential first contact with an alien race, here we come!" A beat. "... uh, sir."

As Lee and Kara departed from CIC, Tigh looked to Adama. "... Potential first contact with an alien race, and you're sending **that** screw up? What if she starts a war?"

Adama smiled faintly. "I have complete confidence in my pilots."

Tigh could only shake his head.

* * *

The raptor, its two escorts close at hand, approached the derelict with no small degree of caution, scanning it with everything they had.

"Minimal heat and energy readings," one of the raptor pilots announced.

"Keep scanning," Apollo said. "If this ship is going to do something, I want to know ten minutes beforehand."

"Aye sir."

After a few minutes circling the ship in silence, Kara spoke up. "Hey Apollo, I might have found a hanger bay. I'm going in for a closer look."

As she drew closer, Starbuck saw that it was indeed a hanger. A hanger full of fighters that bore a passing resemblance to Cylon raiders.

"Oh, frak me," she muttered. Now that she was closer, she could see that they weren't raiders. Not really. They had a visible cockpit, for one. And they reminded her of... beetles? Beetles.

"Starbuck, report."

"Apollo, we've got what looks like a hanger full of... some kind of weird fighters. None of them are active. I'm moving in for a closer look."

Her viper slipped through the entrance to the hanger, and it immediately dropped for the floor. "FRAK!" she yelped, firing her thrusters almost too late: she hit the deck hard, but not quite hard enough to damage the landing struts.

"Starbuck?"

She took a moment to check the condition of her ship. "I'm fine, Apollo. The gravity took me by surprise. Watch for it when you come in to land."

* * *

President Roslin almost frowned as she entered Galactica's CIC. Would have frowned had she been less of a politician. Was that Starbuck's voice she heard over the wireless? She'd come over from Colonial One to observe the operations more in a symbolic role than anything else. Bill had thought it important to have the President on hand in the event of a First Contact event, and she agreed. Of course, she wouldn't actually be as useful as her Vice President in this kind of situation, but that was politics. He'd been sent for as well, and she expected him shortly.

"... Excuse me, Commander?" she murmured, her voice low. "Is that Lieutenant Thrace's voice I hear?"

Adama nodded.

And Lee as well, she noted. Five days after their health had been seriously compromised by an unknown force, and they were back on duty? And chosen for First Contact duty? To say that Laura did not approve was putting it very mildly. She and Bill Adama were going to have to have a talk. Not here. Not in public. But soon.

Silence in the CIC. "... Sir, the raptor has landed on the derelict," Dee reported.

* * *

Gold walls inscribed with unfamiliar symbols. Endless golden corridors. Smooth, dark floors. It was almost more of a palace than a starship. No consideration for defensibility. Everything was built to impress. Their footsteps echoed loudly in the darkness.

Hour rolled into hour. Time seemed to blend. A ship a little more than half the size of the Galactica. One team to explore it. It would take... time.

Regular check ins with Galactica.

Strange piles of tiny block-like shapes scattered across the ship.

Silence.

They came at last to a central area. There, in the heart, was a small platform with a circular ring design carved into it. It almost looked like...

The marine sergeant frowned. "Is it just me, or does that look more than a little like the Astria Porta back at the Delphi museum?"

Lee smiled faintly. "I can't say I've ever seen it. But then, ancient history was never my area of study."

Starbuck moved onto the platform, then, kneeling down to inspect the ring design. "... He's right, it DOES look a little like it."

A marine peered at the button on the wall curiously. Even as he reached for it, the others all began to shout. "Hey, what do you think you're...!" The button depressed.

Six rings emerged from the ring design on the floor, sending a very startled Starbuck backwards a good foot. "Oh, fr..." the rest of her expletive was cut off. There was a brilliant flash of light. The rings descended back into the platform.

Starbuck was gone.

"KARA!"

"Apollo, report."

Lee stared at the spot where Kara Thrace had been... vaporized in a state of shock. Slowly, he flicked the switch on his wireless to transmit, and his voice sounded oddly distant as he spoke: "... Galactica, we have a problem."

* * *

"KARA!" She could hear his voice over the wireless, but she couldn't respond. On the command level of the Ha'tak, Kara Thrace could only raise her arms in surrender.

A woman in a form fitting gold outfit that concealed very little. Even so, she looked... regal. There was authority in her gaze. Short blonde hair. Intense, pale blue eyes. Holding a very threatening looking serpentine weapon. Aimed at Kara's head. The woman asked her a question, and all she could make out was the word 'Tau'ri,' and a tone of disapproval.

They stood like that for half a minute. Then Kara went for her gun, rolling her body to evade the woman's inevitable incoming fire.

The serpentine weapon discharged a blast of electricity. It struck somewhere behind her. She raised her gun. Her finger compressed on the trigger, and then... a second blast struck her in the chest. Pain overwhelmed her senses, and her vision went dark.

* * *

"And there's been no sign of Lieutenant Thrace since she... dematerialized?" It was probably a stupid question, but Vice President Gaius Baltar needed to ask it anyways. He was being led down a golden corridor by one of the Marines, being brought up to speed on what had already happened.

"That's correct, Doctor," the sergeant confirmed. What was her name again? Jill? Syl? He was certain her family name was Hadrian, at least.

Baltar's mind was racing. Racing so fast that he didn't even bother to correct the Sergeant and insist on being called 'Mister Vice President.' It was now two hours since the disappearance of Kara Thrace, and he had all but demanded to join the science team once the event had been described to him. An alien ship. Technology that bordered on the magical. What could possibly have happened?

"I can tell you one thing it wasn't," Six said as she stepped out of Baltar's shadow. "She certainly wasn't vaporized."

"I suppose you would know," he replied sarcastically. At Hadrian's strange look, he composed himself, and went on in a sincere tone, "Being one of the eyewitnesses, I mean." She seemed mollified at that.

They rounded a corner, and all at once Gaius could see the device itself. They were calling it a 'ring platform,' and he could see why: there was little else you could call a raised platform with a circular ring design in the middle of it. Doctor Janet Machaon - one of the fleet's few surviving theoretical physicists - had opened up several wall panels nearby and was pouring over what appeared to be... glowing crystals? Lovely woman, but never one Gaius had pursued. She was the sort more likely to laugh at him than to be impressed, and that rankled. Another scientist - Doctor Jason Aeschines, if Baltar recalled correctly - was examining the platform itself, though being careful to avoid the ring design. Both were documenting their examinations with video cameras.

"Look close, Gaius," Six said patiently. "What do you see?"

He looked. Sergeant Hadrian moved forward to join the other marines. Gaius remained where he was, taking it all in.

"Doctor Baltar?" It was Doctor Aeschines who spoke, rising from the ring platform and walking forward to greet the new arrival.

Something in Gaius's mind clicked, then, and he saw exactly why Six had ruled out vaporization.

"Mister Vice President?" Aeschines again, now looking a touch nonplused.

And then Baltar was entirely in the here and now. "Doctor Aeschines, I presume?" He shook the other man's hand. "Doctor Machaon." Janet nodded, but didn't rise from where she was examining the glowing crystals. "I believe we can rule out vaporization." He had their attention now. Even Lee Adama, who had been seated in the corner, staring at the floor in a state of shock, looked up. "You were both standing not three metres from Lieutenant Thrace when she disappeared, correct?" At their confirming nods, he went on. "I am not a physicist, so do correct me if I'm wrong, but is it not the case that If she had been vaporized, the amount of heat released in the process would have killed you all?"

Janet looked thoughtful, and then nodded. "... Or at least given us third degree burns across the majority of our bodies." She looked to Jason, "Though I suspect the rings we saw come out of the platform may have acted as some sort of containment field..."

"But look," Gaius went on, "No scoring on the platform, either. Nor the ceiling. No sign whatever of the kind of heat that such an operation would necessarily create. What does that tell us? For that matter, why would an advanced alien race put a executioner's device in a central location onboard a starship?" There were any number of possible reasons, of course, but he didn't need them focusing on those.

Six smiled, and moved to lean against the wall next to Lee Adama, who stared at Gaius for a long moment like a drowning man who had just been given a life raft. "What are you saying, Doctor?"

"I'm saying that it is possible - only possible - that Lieutenant Thrace is alive." A beat. "Obviously she's been unable to use the wireless to check in, but there may be any number of reasons for that." Gaius was in the zone now. He was sure he knew what this device was for. "I need a video camera."

A third scientist - Doctor John Lasko - handed over the device he'd requested, and Baltar quickly turned it on, set it to record, and placed it on the platform fully inside the ring shape.

"Who was it who activated the device the first time?"

Lasko reluctantly raised his hand. He was an older man with graying hair and a weathered face, and though there was a certain dignity about him, he looked shamefaced at what he had done.

"If you please," Gaius said.

Lasko nodded, moving to the controls on the wall just above where Doctor Machaon had been working - she'd now moved to a safe distance. After a moment, he pressed the switch. After a half-second delay, six rings shot up from the ring shape in the floor. There was a flash, and the camera was gone. A few moments later, at Gaius's signal, Lasko pressed the button again. The rings returned. Another flash. The camera sat within the rings, unharmed.

A shocked murmur ran through those assembled. And Gaius? Gaius laughed out loud in delight, scooping up the camera and quickly rewinding it to observe what had happened from its point of view. "Teleportation!" he exclaimed.

Another murmur.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Lieutenant Thrace is almost certainly alive. But perhaps more importantly, the technology on this ship is perhaps the most significant find in the history of the Twelve Colonies. It is for moments like this that we dream of becoming scientists, and I am proud to share it with you all."

The tension was released. The fear was dispelled. The assembled scientists broke out into applause. And Six, clad now in her red dress, smiled proudly at her chosen one.

... And then Lee Adama spoiled the whole affair by rising to his feet and voicing the one question that could tear the group's focus off of Gaius Baltar. "All right, Doctor Baltar. If Kara's not dead, where is she? What did the camera pick up from the other side?"

The spell was broken. He was no longer a god but a man. Resentment boiled within him for a moment, and Six seemed to sense it. "Pride goes before destruction, Gaius, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

He wanted to tell her to shut up. Instead, he smiled and looked to Captain Adama. "Well, obviously, she's moved on from the teleportation chamber. It has been two hours, Captain."

Captain Adama nodded. "Right." He was gathering up his gear, then. "Sergeant Hadrian, I want you and two marines to remain here with the science team. The rest of you, with me." He walked with purpose up onto the platform and stood in the center of the ring shape. A moment later, three marines - half the squad - joined him. He looked to Lasko. "Do it," he said, and took care to study exactly what glyphs the man manipulated to activate the device. A moment later, accompanied by the sound of the activating ring platform, he and the three marines vanished in a flash of light.

* * *

Words. Concepts. Unfamiliar. _Hasshak_. _Tau'ri_. Thoughts. Alien and cold. Loud. A sense of claustrophobia. _Tok'ra._ _Kree tal lok_. A sense of irony. Worshipful attention. _Ona rak ja'do_. "_Tal shal mak, Tau'ri_." OK, that was definitely out loud. It hurt to open her eyes. It was too bright. There was too much confusion. Alien thoughts were flooding through her mind, and Starbuck grit her teeth as she forced them back, down, away. Forced herself not to hear them.

Slowly, the blinding white of her vision faded into something intelligible, and she saw that she was lying at the feet of a blonde, imperious woman. The same woman who had shot her. Motherfrakker. Kara started to rise, and almost immediately a lance of white hot agony struck her side. She fell face first on the deck, screaming.

She and the woman weren't alone. Three men were with them. Large. Muscular. All three bore the same black symbol on their foreheads: two crescents, one on top of the other, and curving branches off to either side. Two held staves of some kind. The third held a... she didn't recognize the weapon. Some kind of metal stick.

The woman spoke again, and this time Kara understood her. "Identify yourself, human of the First World." Her voice was strangely metallic.

Kara glared up at the woman. "Kara Thrace," she recited. "Lieutenant. Serial number 462753."

The woman arched an eyebrow, imperious and serene. Immediately, the man with the metal stick moved forward and jabbed it into Kara's stomach. Agony drowned out everything else, and it was long in fading.

The deck was cool against her face.

"You are in the presence of a god, First World scum," the man told her once she had recovered enough to sit up. "You will show the proper respect to the divine Sekhmet."

"Frak you," Kara spat.

He moved in again with the pain stick, but this time, she was ready. She caught him by the arm before he'd committed to the thrust, and used his own momentum to plant the man flat on his back. She was fast: she'd stomped on his face as hard as she could twice before the other two had a chance to react. There was a sense of strength as she did so. She felt... alive. It did more damage than it should have. Even as they raised their staves, pointing one of the ends at her, the woman in gold raised her hand. A jewel fitted into her palm flashed, and Kara hit the bulkhead, hard.

"Insolence," Sekhmet intoned, sounding very displeased indeed.

The man Kara had stomped was dead. That much was quite clear. His head had been completely pulped in two stomps.

"By the gods," one of the two surviving men whispered.

"Leave us," Sekhmet commanded.

The two guards exchanged glances. "My lady, this is unwise... we should kill her and be done with it. We have not yet restored the ship's systems, and we can not afford to devote resources to..." He stopped short at her withering glare.

Sekhmet's eyes flared golden. "Am I not a god?" she asked. "Have I not commanded you? Do as I say!"

They went.

The door shut.

And Sekhmet's entire demeanor changed. She lost the metallic edge to her voice, and spoke as a normal human woman, and she smiled. "You are more formidable than you appear, Kara Thrace," she said. A beat. "I am Shallan of the Tok'ra. Are you a member of an SG team? Are there more of you aboard? We must contact them immediately if we are to escape."

Kara stared, and for the first time in a long time, she was at a complete loss for words.

* * *

The news had spread through the fleet like wildfire: First Contact. A genuine alien starship, and a derelict one at that. Talk of its capabilities was as varied as the imaginations of the humans in the fleet. Only on board Galactica was there any semblance of accuracy, and only the command staff and the President knew the full enormity of their find: if the teleportation device was anything to go by, this ship possessed technology beyond their wildest dreams. What followed, however, was perhaps a less pleasant thought: what do we do if the Cylons find us before we've figured it out?

That was the question before the leaders of the fleet. The Quorum of Twelve was demanding to speak with Commander Adama, and not for the first time, Roslin wished that she had never agreed to reform that particular governing body. Despotism was easy. Especially in a situation like the one the fleet had found itself in. Democracy was hard. She pushed away the thought. Dangerous. She couldn't afford to walk down that path. Ruling by pure authority is always easy... at first. But the long term cost? It was more than she was willing to pay. Unless there was no alternative.

So steeling herself, the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol stepped into Commander Adama's cabin.

He was there, seated at his desk, glasses perched precariously on his nose as he read over the report that had just come in from the science team. When she entered, he looked up, met her gaze. Something passed between them in the silence. She could already see his defenses going up. "Madam President," he acknowledged, rising to his feet. He waited until she sat before he retook his seat. "Something I can do for you?"

So that's how it was going to be. Fine. "I thought we should discuss the matter of the alien ship."

"You're worried about the Cylons."

"Aren't you?"

Bill was silent for a moment. "The Galactica has three remaining nuclear warheads," he said. "If the Cylons show up before we know enough to either salvage or take command of the alien ship..."

"Let's be realistic about the latter, Bill," Roslin said. "Do you really think that we'll have the systems of a totally alien ship figured out in... how long do you suppose until the Cylons find us again? Hours? Days? Weeks at the most?"

He nodded his reluctant agreement. "In the event of a Cylon attack, I am prepared to destroy the alien vessel rather than let it fall into Cylon hands. If it takes all three nukes to do that, so be it."

Good. "I agree," she said.

He smiled faintly. "Glad we're on the same page." It was a military decision, and she knew it. So was his choice to put Starbuck and Apollo back on the flight roster. Didn't mean she wouldn't call him on it.

"Which brings me to the second reason I'm here."

He looked up.

"Forgive me for being blunt, but why in the name of the gods were Lieutenant Thrace and Captain Adama on the team that was sent to the alien ship?"

Adama looked at his desk. He didn't say anything for a long moment. The lights of his cabin turned his spectacles into shining mirrors. "The particulars of crew assignments are a military decision," he said, just as she knew he would.

"I am aware of the nature of the decision. Five days after their health was seriously compromised by an unknown force, and you put them back on duty? Chose them for First Contact duty? What were you thinking?" Left unsaid were the obvious potential consequences: contagion spreading unchecked through the crew, relapses in the midst of combat, development of new symptoms, any number of other things neither of them could anticipate.

He didn't rise. Didn't let his anger show. She knew it was there. Knew she couldn't push him very far on this, but she had to say her piece. To do otherwise would risk the whole dynamic of power between them. "I need all of my pilots, Madam President," he said, his voice soft, but she could sense the steel beneath. "We barely have enough crew to support two shifts, and we don't have enough pilots. Doc Cottle cleared them, and they're the best I have."

She couldn't push him any further on this. She knew it. He knew it. She nodded. "I hope to the gods that I'm wrong about this, Commander," she said.

Silence.

She rose to her feet, then. Headed for the exit. He sat there at his desk, his expression unreadable. And then, just as she was about to step through the door to the hallway, he spoke, and his voice was so soft that Laura almost missed it:

"So do I," he said.

* * *

Nobody likes being shot at, but some dislike it less than others. Kara Thrace had never really minded getting shot at - it was the getting hit part that bothered her, and while she still wasn't entirely sure what those weird staff-guns fired, at what was effectively point blank range, she was pretty sure that if the two Jaffa guards fired at her, she would take two ... whatever it was they fired, to the chest. Absently, she let her gaze stray to ... Shallan? Shallan.

Shallan had a clever plan. See? It could totally work! She hadn't even put ironic quotes around 'clever' when she'd thought the word!

Supposedly, Shallan was something called a 'Toke-Rah.' And that was different from a 'Go-ah-oold,' though what that was, Kara had no idea, but she'd insisted on the distinction, so Kara had assented. Shallan wanted to lock Kara in a cell and finish the system repairs. Then she intended to kill the guards (which she called 'Juffa,' and of which there were a total of six left from a crew of thousands) and then deliver Kara back to her people, who Shallan referred to as 'Tow-ri,' and of which notion Kara had not yet disabused her.

The downside of this plan was that it required Kara to wait in a cell and trust a complete stranger, possibly a Cylon - though she'd never seen a Cylon with a funny sounding voice and glowing eyes before... ok, with THAT kind of funny sounding voice or glowing eyes. That wasn't going to happen. Not when other humans were already on board the ship. So she watched and waited.

The door to the cell opened. A nudge of the barrel of the staff-gun against the small of her back. Her mind was full of her thoughts, and his thoughts, and the other guard's thoughts. She'd shut out Shallan for the moment. ... It was getting easier, now. Less of a headache to try to sort them out. She still had nothing but context to go on to determine whose thoughts were whose, of course. In her own head, a thought was a thought was a thought. That kind of surprised her. Not as much as the very idea of having developed some kind of telepathy at all, but still. It was still enough of advantage to allow for what she did next.

Her hands were bound behind her back, which was a problem. So she pivoted forward, tucked, and rolled, pivoting her body in mid roll to slide her bound hands down over her hips, twisting even more awkwardly to force her hands below her heels, and then up again even as she came back to her feet. The awkwardness didn't matter. The guards began to react, but she could SEE it before they did. She knew where they were aiming. When they would fire. She twisted her body, and twin plasma bolts passed by her on either side with scant centimeters to spare.

Then she was moving. The first guard's body was between her and the second guard. The first guard thrusted his staff out to catch her legs. Too slow. A half second to a second of advanced warning may not seem like much, but in a fight, it makes all the difference. Her body seemed to thrum with power. Gods, but she had never felt so alive! She used the first guard's own momentum to disarm him. She knew how to fire the weapon: she had experienced his own perspective when he had done it a moment earlier. A bolt of plasma took the second guard in the chest, and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

One guard left. Shallan began to react, then, her eyes widening in surprise as she moved back.

Focus. Focus. The Jaffa warrior launched into a smooth, complex combination of blows with his staff. Even knowing it was coming didn't make her able to match him with the staff: Kara had never learned to fight with such things. Instead, she fell backwards, barely avoiding having her throat crushed by the end of his staff, rolled up to her feet, and shot him in the face.

The second jaffa guard fell to the ground, dead.

The whole exchange had lasted about eight seconds.

"So," Kara said. "About that plan where I stay in a holding cell..."

And for the first time since the day she met one Colonel Jack O'Neill, Shallan was at a complete loss for words.

* * *

Lee Adama made his way cautiously through the corridors of this new level of the ship. Three marines followed after, weapons at the ready. It was strange. There was a... hum, at the edge of his hearing. He could ignore it, but it was still there, like a song in another room that he couldn't quite make out. The more people were present, the more he noticed it. It had been like that since Kara had... done whatever she'd done. He tried not to think about it, and not just because now wasn't the time to let his mind wander.

Identical golden halls followed after identical golden halls. Two intense minutes went by with not a sign of Kara.

Then the sound of footsteps. Metal boots clanking on the deck.

They were approaching a corner. He signaled to the marines, and they moved into position to provide supporting fire.

He peaked around the corner. A pair of jackal-headed warriors with glowing eyes were there to meet him. Beyond them, some twenty meters down the hall, was an open door to what looked like the bridge. Or maybe a throne room.

The surprise was not mutual: Lee spun back from the corner before the plasma bolts could find his body: they impacted noisily against the far wall. He sprinted back behind the line of marines, and the two Jaffa sprinted after him.

The marines opened fire as soon as the Jaffa rounded the corner.

It is important to note that these are trained Colonial marines. Colonial marines whose standard armament is an armor-piercing round intended to deal with Cylon Centurions. Colonial marines who are very, very good at their jobs. The gunfire tore through the Jaffa armor like it wasn't even there, leaving dozens of bullet-shaped holes across the center of mass of the two Jaffa warriors.

They were dead before they hit the ground.

The sound of boots. Two more Jaffa emerged from the door to the bridge, their jackal-helms rising up from their armor and snapping into place even as they charged... before a second quick, controlled burst of gunfire cut them to ribbons, and they too joined the ranks of the dead.

Silence.

"Starbuck?" Lee called at last. "You in there?"

Kara poked her head from around the corner in the far distance. "Lee?" she asked, sounding surprised and carrying one of those staves that the guards had been holding. She looked to the Jaffa corpses, then towards Lee and his marine team. A moment later, a second woman came round the corner, this one clad all in gold and ornate jewelry, with pixie-short blonde hair and intense blue eyes. The marines raised their weapons almost in unison, and the woman froze, saying something in a language that neither Lee nor the marines understood.

"Easy, boys. This is Shallan. She's not one of the bad guys."

The marines lowered their weapons.

"Glad to see you're alive, Lieutenant," Lee said, smiling. Shallan looked confused at that, though he didn't know why that would confuse her.

"You know me, sir," Kara replied. "I'm like a bad cubit: I always turn up."

* * *

At that moment, some thirty thousand kilometers distant from the fleet, and twenty five thousand kilometers distant from the alien ship, four cylon basestars flashed into existence.

Panic rippled through the fleet. In Galactica's CIC, the old controlled chaos of their flight resumed once more: "Order the fleet to jump to the emergency coordinates," Adama said. And then, "Launch the alert vipers."

"Fleet is jumping, sir. Cylons are launching raiders. Estimate one minute till fighter intercept, two minutes till the missiles hit our flak barriers."

"Pitch ten degrees. Roll six degrees."

"Firing solution calculated."

"Fire."

Outside the Galactica, a torrent of fire from the main and secondary turrets filled the dark with light. The main railguns. The secondaries. The flak barrier burst into being.

"Get me Apollo," Adama ordered.

"... Sir, Apollo reports resistance from alien fighters on board the derelict vessel."

"Tell him to get the hell out of there. He's got three minutes till we blow that thing straight to Hades."

"Apollo reports negative. He..."

Adama picked up the headset. "Apollo, Galactica Actual."

"We're a little busy right now, sir," Apollo replied. In the background, Adama could hear a woman speaking in a language he didn't know, followed by Starbuck's voice... translating?

"We're about to blow the alien ship. Evacuate immediately."

"Negative, Galactica. It's a long story. Sit tight one more minute, and we'll..."

A half dozen missiles slipped through Galactica's flak barrier and impacted against the side of the ship, and whatever Lee had been about to say was lost in a wash of static. "Apollo, get the HELL off that ship! That's an order!"

In the background, the unknown woman said something incomprehensible again, followed by Starbuck's voice announcing, ever so faintly: "She's bringing the ship's weapon systems online. Stand by..."

Silence.

Adama felt despair grow within him, but still he did his duty. "Recall vipers. Prepare to launch all remaining nukes at the derelict."

"Sir," Gata said, "We're detecting a huge power spike from the alien ship!"

Dee spoke up, then, her voice sounding panicked. "Radiological alarm!"

The weight of gravity seemed to double for Commander Adama. "...Where?"

"The system doesn't appear to know what to make of..." Dee sounded confused. "Sir, the alien ship is firing... what the frak are those?"

On the DRADIS screen, tiny yellow globes began to lance out towards the base stars. First one, then three, then twelve, then twenty, then more still...

Outside, huge glowing projectiles of electromagnetically sheathed plasma lanced out through space towards the four Cylon vessels. The first few shots detonated against the Cylon fighter swarms, and the DRADIS displays rippled as the electromagnetic pulse normally associated with an atmospheric detonation of nuclear ordinance spread out across the Cylon fighter screen.

One shot impacted against a basestars hull, tore through its outer layer of armor like it was made of paper and sent two of its spires spinning away into space. The second shot obliterated what remained of the ship.

In a matter of seconds, three base stars had been reduced to wreckage. The last one jumped away with more than a dozen plasma bolts heading its way.

Silence in CIC.

"GET ME THAT SHIP!" Adama all but shouted.

A moment later, communication was established, and Starbuck's howls of delight filled the wireless. "DID YOU FRAKKING SEE THAT? Oh, I'm good! I'm GOOD!"

"Starbuck?" Adama asked, totally dumbfounded.

The glowing remains of the destroyed base stars slowly dimmed, faded, and went out.

END CHAPTER 05


End file.
